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America's (Flawed) Historical Views of the Middle East

submitted by mattsy
1 decade 5 years 9 months 1 week ago

Short segment from Oren's lecture on the history of America's relations with the Middle East.

Full lecture here: http://tinyurl.com/booeu5

2 Comments

Farhad2000

says...

Salient points that apply to the Middle East policy as a whole.

I agree that the US has done a poor job of reading the human terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan because the mission was always formulated as force elimination not reconstruction.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5366677

I remember reading several books on Iraq and one thread passed through all of them, US troops would complain that higher command did not give them the information about culture necessary to interact with the populace, or when it was given it was hopelessly racist and based on works from the early 20th century. One common misrepresentation was that Arabs all wished only for death and are all habitual liars. Not a great framework to work off when invading a whole nation.