Victory In Tripoli

Dude! I can't believe it! I totally got neo-con'd!!!

Remember how I was reading Victory in Tripoli and I said it was good? Well, it was -- until I got to the end. According to the author, Joshua London (who I now know holds positions at the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Policy Center and the American Spectator), the lesson learned from the war on Triploi is that Muslims are greedy, untrustworthy and only understand force and America was right to invade Iraq and we must stay the course.

I was so pissed off that I wrote the following review of the book over at Amazon:

I actually enjoyed the history portion of the book. Unfortunately, London's conclusion -- Arabs are greedy, untrustworthy and only understand force so America was right to invade Iraq and we must stay the course -- is horse poop.

According to London -- who's written articles on his book's relevance to Iraq at the National Review and the Heritage Foundation -- Jefferson (the father of the Democratic Party) was a vacillating appeaser and was wrong to end the war with Tripoli without toppling the Pasha and grinding the city beneath the heels of American military might.

This ignores, of course, the fact that America had no subsequent serious problems with Tripoli.

London conflates James Madison's war against Algeria -- a decade later -- with the war against Tripoli and credits the "strong and resolute" Madison (a conservative, of course) with leading the charge against the North African Muslim evil-doers which culminated in France and Italy's colonial occupation and subjugation of the region. Mission accomplished. Hah!

It's easy to convince yourself that the simple-minded direct action and occupation of annoying nations that London advocates in this book is the best course of action in any situation -- diplomacy and negotiation really is hard and complex -- until you remember that France was brutally forced out of Algiers and our own occupation in Iraq has left America worse off in the region than before.

This book is nothing but a shameless plug for the neo-conservative notion that America must use its military might to reshape the world in our own image. We now see how far that got us.

tags: book review  victory in tripoli