From Politico‘s Mike Allen:
WHAT MISSISSIPPI GOV. HALEY BARBOUR IS READING: “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present,” by Dr. Michael B. Oren (2007), now the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
The book is propaganda for the special relationship to Israel. From Ira Glunts:
His book had the truly fanciful goal of showing that the intense American involvement in the Middle East and especially our engagement with the idea of a renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the region, was not a recent development. Oren claimed that both the Zionist idea and the friction between Americans and Muslims are important and persistent narrative threads running through American history from very early times. For instance, he describes the military confrontations of a young American republic with the Barbary pirates as the first battles in what we now call the “War On Terror.” My own conclusion after reading his book, was that Oren’s role as a conservative Israeli think-tanker had completely subsumed any desire he may have had to be an honest American historian.
