president Jimmy Carter's The Blood of Abraham

But there is inadequate mention of the underlying causes of the meshing that goes back much far than the beginning of the twentieth century. This is probably sufficient grounding for the quality of analysis in which Carter engages here. But his claim to investigate the underlying, centuries-old grow of the conflict is, it seems, merely display without much substance poop it. Unfortunately, this also means that his analyses do non go ambiguous enough to be of much than transitory usefulness. They are interest as history--the commentary of a statesman in the sum of the on personnel casualty conflict--but they do not go very deep.

In still a little over a cristal the situation in the Middle East has altered so radically that many of Carter's points are now irrelevant. This is especially true up because Carter, as seems logical for a former president, treats the subject of Middle-Eastern conflict from the vantage point of individual leaders. This "great man" lift to the diplomatic and military history of the region is expenditurewhile, but it has a limited applicability for any time much beyond the period at which the book is written. The difference between Israel's benjamin Netanyahu in 1997 and Menachem Begin in 1983 are enough to wee-wee this clear.

Carter drew on his experience of the region during his presidency and on his 1983 return trips to Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Thus he is able to assign interesting insights on, for example, the contrast be

tween An contend Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. But, at the time Carter could not envision the collapse of the Soviet Union, which came roughly five years later(prenominal), and much of his discussion of points such as the Soviet influence on the region is, therefore, even more seriously outdated than his accounts of the opinions and tendencies of the individual leaders.

Carter also makes errors that seem or else elementary. He could not convey foreseen the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, of course, when he wrote his book. even so when he commented on the Gulf situation he said that the Ayatollah Khomeini "has defied all efforts to resolve the long and extremely expensive war between his country and Iran"--neglecting to consider the role of Iran in the war (187).

He then went on to claim that the "greatest potential threat to regional stability" was Iran's "exporting the Shia ghostly zeal and political revolution to the more stable and blimpish Moslem regimes" (187). At the time, of course, the Ayatollah was demonized in the same fashion later applied to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But what is around surprising is that Carter does not seem to realize that Iraq and its ally Syria were the only Middle-eastern nations with substantial Shiite populations. This is a major reason why the war was taking place and there was also, therefore, little danger that Shia Islam was going to be exported to Saudi Arabia. The danger lay in opposite forms of conflict or in other forms of religious conservatism. Yet this kind of misinformation seems to reflect the manner in which US form _or_ system of government regarding some regions of the world is formulated. That is, only the current trouble-makers are worth any attention and they will, if they are not stopped, continue until they have dominated the entire country, region, or world. Specific information regarding the differences in Islamic sects or the source of the people's discontents in countries such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia are simply not on the map for US policy-makers until
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.