Book review--Devil's Game

The US incursion into Southwest Asia has a heck of a lot in common with what we did in (to) Southeast Asia in previous decades, with one major difference. This time we are, all comments by Smirky and his pals to the contrary, fighting a new war against a religion (Islam) instead of the old one against a political philosophy (Communism). The irony of it all is that the fight against Communism--especially Soviet Communism--led the US, under 9 presidential administrations to aid the radical Islamists that are now in control of those nations we most distrust. The story of how the US helped foster these radical right-wing reactionary fundamentalists is told in Robert Dreyfuss's Devil's Game.
Dreyfuss has done a remarkable job in explaining some extremely complicated political and religious maneuverings over the last 100 or so years via a relatively short book. In less than 400 pages readers get a short history of Islam (especially the rise of fundamentalism and its anti-Soviet, anti-leftist adherents), the Middle East, and those parts of southern Asia that have had an impact on (or have been affected by) the "Islamist" movement (mostly Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq). That the US has been putting its fingers into all of these pies since the end of World War II, and almost exclusively to the benefit of those fundamentalist Islamic groups, is a tale that needs to be heard by any and all who want to absolve us of all blame for 9/11 or any other act of violence directed our way. Dreyfuss makes it clear that we do indeed need to "blame America" (as the blind, or those willing to be blinded by, right wingers decry) for many of the ills that are befalling our policies and actions in that region. Without our continual aid, it seems unlikely that radical Islamism would have taken hold of the political processes in any of the countries Dreyfuss has analyzed, even in the absence of any Soviet influence over their opposition. Our wrongheaded pursuit of anticommunism, in other words, led us to support not only corrupt--but relatively peaceful, at least insofar as we were concerned, and certainly pliable--rightist governments like those controlled by the Saudi royals and the Shah of Iran, but also more violent and "unreliable" groups like the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who came to us spouting anti-Soviet rhetoric was given financial and political salvation, regardless of their actual goals or ideals. According to Dreyfuss, the US intelligence agencies (who were notoriously ill-informed and -equipped to accurately assess the politics and societies of the Middle East and south Asia) and the State Departments during the Cold War actually encouraged the pan-Islamic movement as a means of creating a Soviet-free southern border to the USSR, ignoring the increasingly isolated and overlooked factions within those agencies that warned of the potential dangers of Islamism.
Devil's Game is a vital addition to the small but growing body of literature that exists to detail the shortcomings of the CIA and the State Department in its dealings with terrorism, but it is also a necessary history of why people like Osama bin Laden hate us so much. Anti-Islam has a long and unfortunately mostly English-language color to it, but our own blithely ironic and self-serving support of the most virulent strain of Islamism has done us the most damage. It is this ignorance, in addition to the continuing and short-sighted support we give Israel, that the Islamic terrorists hate, not "our freedom" or "our way of life", or whatever nonsense Smirky is touting this week. Dreyfuss details it all, and it is an ugly and sordid story.