America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich Page B

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The Lord’s anger burned against Israel
and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years.
N UMBERS 32:13

Of Balzac, Henry James wrote, “The way to judge him is to try to walk all round him,” undertaking a preliminary survey to reveal “how remarkably far we have to go.” 1 The history that follows, an account of U.S. military efforts to determine the fate and future of the Greater Middle East, is itself a preliminary walk around, or through, a comparably large subject. If nothing else, America’s War for the Greater Middle East seeks to reveal how remarkably far we have to go to understand what those efforts have produced and what they have cost.
    Questions raised by this undertaking will preoccupy—and perhaps confound—scholars for decades to come. I have limited myself to four of the most fundamental, the answers to which lay the basis for further inquiry. First, what motivated the United States to act as it has? Second, what have the civilians responsible for formulating policy and soldiers charged with implementing it sought to accomplish? Third, regardless of their intentions, what actually ensued? And fourth, with what consequences? In short, the book links aims to actions to outcomes.
    As an American who cares deeply about the fate of his country, I should state plainly my own assessment of this ongoing war, now well into its fourth decade. We have not won it. We are not winning it. Simply trying harder is unlikely to produce a different outcome. Some may consider this history premature. Yet only by remembering and confronting what we have largely chosen to disregard will Americans be able to choose a different course.
Andrew J. Bacevich
Walpole, Massachusetts
December 2015



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America’s War for the Greater Middle East began with failure in the desert. In no way did this failure compare to the disasters that once befell U.S. forces at Kasserine Pass during World War II or the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. On those earlier battlefields, many hundreds of Americans lost their lives. During Operation Eagle Claw, which began and ended on the night of April 24–25, 1980, U.S. fatalities numbered in the single digits. Even before U.S. troops closed with the enemy, Eagle Claw unraveled—the equivalent of a football team succumbing to defeat even before taking the field.
    For those who devised, ordered, and participated in this mission, the resulting humiliation was almost unbearable. Yet humiliation makes for a poor teacher. The lessons that the United States would take from this failure turned out to be the wrong ones. The underlying premise—that the problems facing the United States in the Greater Middle East would yield to a military solution—not only escaped notice but became more deeply entrenched.
    Eagle Claw combined modesty of purpose with audacity of design. As America’s War for the Greater Middle East evolved over the next several decades, a succession of presidents described U.S. objectives in expansive terms. Through its use of superior military power, they promised, the United States was going to liberate and uplift. U.S. forces would restore peace and spread democracy. They would succor the afflicted and protect the innocent. They would promote the rule of law and advance the cause of human rights.
    Yet participants in the abbreviated campaign that initiated the War for the Greater Middle East set out to do none of these things. They sought merely to rescue.

    The previous November, a group of young Iranian radicals, fueled by revolutionary fervor, had seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and taken American diplomats and other officials captive. Efforts to negotiate the hostages’ release had proven futile. Now, having apparently exhausted all other alternatives, a frustrated President Jimmy Carter ordered America’s warriors to give it a try.
    The plan developed by U.S.