Check out Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (Penguin) by Prof.Geoffrey Wawro of No. Texas State, just released last month. It is 700 pages of the most comprehensive look at US policy in the region going back to the beginning of the last century in which he devotes considerable space to the early Zionist movement, the birth of the state and the power of the lobby going back to Wilson. In his conclusion, Wawro writes that the US has to "break" a lance on behalf of the Palestinians expelled in 1948.
Break a lance? It seems to mean that the US must risk taking remedial action to make up for its "legitimizing"of Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948. Wawro demonstrates an understanding of the history that motivates Israel’s actions and the reasoning behind them but does not excuse them.
His both fresh and fair treatment of the subject may be be a harbinger of an onrushing wave of America’s own "new historians" and reflects the ground breaking work of Mearsheimer and Walt whose book is one of its many references. Wawro had access to a number of heretofore unknown British and US military archives which makes this book invaluable to anyone seriously concerned with understanding the Middle East. I will be interviewing him on my radio program this Wednesday. What is interesting is that there are supporting blurbs by both Mearsheimer and Newt Gingrich on the dust jacket. I am sure that Newt didn’t read it because it isn’t kind to those who brought us both wars with Iraq. It is also interesting, thus far, that it is being ignored by the lobby and its stable of book reviewers, no doubt hoping that it will go away.
Here’s a sample of his viewpoints in this March 24 article questioning the Israel-US relationship, No Better Friend?” America, Israel and the Occupied Territories.
