Payback: America's Long War in the Middle East

Washington, DC: Brassey's (US), Inc, 1991. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. xiv, 257, [1] pages. Endpaper maps. Notes. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. DJ rear flap creased. DJ spine sunned. Foreword by Pierre Salinger. John Kent Cooley (November 25, 1927 - August 6, 2008) was an American journalist and author who specialized in islamist groups and the Middle East. He worked as a radio and off-air television correspondent for ABC News. Cooley was one of only a handful of Western journalists widely regarded and trusted in the Middle East as an expert on the area's history and politics. He interviewed several of the region's heads of state and was personally acquainted with the senior leadership of the PLO. His many awards include the coveted George Polk Award for distinguished career achievement in international reporting. He was a key part of the ABC News Prime Time Live team that won an Emmy in 1990 for its investigation into the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Derived from a Kirkus review: ABC News correspondent Cooley comprehensively recounts America's protracted involvement in the politics of the Middle East. Cooley traces what he sees as America's Mideast policy failures to its overreliance on the Shah of Iran, whose interests, he argues, America misidentified with its own. The author says that the Shah's collapse in 1979 touched off decades of confused American policymaking actuated by ignorance of the Islamic radicals' profound desire to rid the region of American influence, by Israeli and Saudi anxiety toward Iranian fundamentalism, and by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Cooley reviews--the Iran-contra scandal and the US Marine debacle in Lebanon, for instance--and also provides historical insights into ancient conflicts in the region. He points out that ties between Iran and the Jewish community permitted Iranians to collude with Israelis in the arms-for-hostages deal. Cooley also discusses systemic inadequacies in America's policymaking bureaucracy that have paralyzed American policy. A skillful weaving of ancient and more current history into an insightful analysis of America's policy problems in the Middle East.