The Great War for Civilisation
During the thirty years that award-winning journalist Robert Fisk has been reporting on the Middle East, he has covered every major event in the region, from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution, from the American hostage crisis in Beirut (as one of only two Western journalists in the city at the time) to the Iran-Iraq War, from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Israel’s invasions of Lebanon, from the Gulf War to the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq. Now he brings his knowledge, his firsthand experience and his intimate understanding of the Middle East to a book that addresses the full complexity of its political history and its current state of affairs. --Random House Publishing
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- Disputed by who?
“Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken”[1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
I also recommend the book “The Great War for Civilisation” by Robert Fisk
- Imperial by William T. Vollmann
It is an almost stream-of-consciousness dissection of the social, cultural, geographic, and hydrologic history of an area that most would write-off as desert wasteland. It gave me a portal into the complexity of an ordinary place and how it is viewed through the lens of a genius.
The Places In Between - Rory Stewart
An introduction to how radically different and complex societies outside-the-fold of the Western world can be, and how ancient many of their traditions and way of life are. It also reminded me that real adventure necessitates risk.
The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk
Taught me that whatever I know about foreign conflict, I know nothing about foreign conflict.
The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam
Provides a template for how the US government embarks upon adventures abroad. Taught me how stupid tremendously smart people can be when you get them all together in one room.
- Just going to pick on a few things you mentioned:
The Iranian people overthrew the shah who ruled for ~38 years and whom the US supported, and seemed to choose theocracy. (I say "seemed" because I'm sure there are two sides to the story. From the little reading I've done, it seems there was significant support for the theocracy.) They now hold elections, though I don't know how free of meddling they are. So they've gone from a US-supported dictatorship, a feeling much of the Middle East and Latin Americas knows, to a partially democratic theocracy.
Negative attitudes towards homosexuality are common across the Middle East; they're not unique to Iran. Neither are negative attitudes towards Israel.
I don't know enough about Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran supposedly building nuclear weapons to comment, so I won't.
For those interested, I highly recommend reading Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East"[0]. The author was in Iran during the revolution which overthrew the Shah and offers a fascinating perspective into the Iranian people. The rest of the book is proving to be amazing too!
[0] https://smile.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Mid...
- The "euthanasia" actually began in September 1939. October was when the law was passed, which was backdated to September 1st.
This isn't just to be pedantic, I'm currently reading The Third Reich trilogy by Richard J. Evans, and this is an instance of the Nazi emphasis on appearing as though they had a legal basis for their actions, even well into the dictatorship. It's one of the most bizarre parts of the story to me.
The euthanasia was attempted to be done in secret, so under what circumstance the backdating (or even the existence) of the law could possibly have been useful is beyond me. Under Nazi victory, those involved were safe from prosecution, and in case of defeat, the law could not have saved them.
It's like something straight out of the movie Brazil, though not being fiction and having resulted in the death and suffering of countless real people makes not possible to enjoy the insanity of the situation.
I highly recommend the books, though I don't exactly have a weak stomach, and many parts were quite difficult for me. It reminded me quite a bit of Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation, which was also extremely long and dense with suffering.
- Afghanistan's troubles, sadly, predate the Soviets by quite a wide margin. The USSR was just one more interloper in a long line of interlopers. They weren't the first, and clearly they weren't the last.
A good book on this subject is "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" by Robert Fisk. Agree or disagree with his stance (particularly re: Israel), but his understanding of the history and context of the Middle East cannot be ignored.
tl;dr summary: Before the Soviets Afghanistan was played as a border state by the British, seeking to use it as a buffer state to protect India against perceived Russian aggression.
- Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" is strongly recommended - a very personal account, and all the better for it.
