Andrew J. Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. Bacevich is the author of "America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History" (2017). He is also editor of the book, "The Short American Century" (2012), and author of several others, including: "Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country" (2014, American Empire Project); "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" (2011); "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" (2013), and "The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II" (2009).
This actually a play on Michael Shrimpton’s article, which is entitled “Israel hammers Hamas,” and which is completely devoid of historical facts and deep analysis about what has been doing on in the Middle East for the better part of sixty years.
Back in 2014, Shrimpton and I had a long discussion about similar issues, both at VT and via email messages. For the life of me, I simply cannot understand why Shrimpton continues to avoid scholarly studies that have been written on these issues and move on to perpetuate the Israeli narratives, which, as my dear friend Mark Dankof put it in our article The Closing of the Zionist Mind, is based on:
I honestly don’t know why former president George W. Bush isn’t in jail at this present time. He is the man who was used by the Neocons and the Israelis to create total chaos in the Middle East.
Now Bush thinks that he can still comment on political issues. He has recently declared that the if the Republican Party can distance itself from “white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism,” then it will rise again.
Seriously? Is that really what decent Americans have been struggling with over the past 200 years or so? Aren’t perpetual wars in the Middle East and the destruction of the middle class by technocrats, plutocrats, demagogues, and oligarchic institutions that are ravaging the country? Didn’t Bush himself lick the boots of the Neocons, who ended up destroying countries like Iraq?