Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World

Foreign policy scholar Gordon offers an eminently reasonable new strategy for fighting the war on terror that can be added to the growing pile of substantially similar denunciations of President Bush's strategy. Precise and persuasive yet oddly unimpassioned, he calls for more attention to global jihadist networks and less on Iraq, aggressively pursuing a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and constructively engaging with Iran while attempting to contain its ambitions as a regional hegemon. This is the stuff of countless op-eds over the previous few years; one gets little sense that Gordon has brought much of his substantial experience and expertise to bear on this slim volume. By drawing parallels between the current struggle, the war in Vietnam and the Cold War, he highlights the need for creatively rethinking policy in the face of setbacks. Yet the lessons he draws from history are mostly platitudes: “The United States cannot extricate itself from the Iraq quagmire without damage or risk.... Whatever the damage may be to U.S. credibility and in the war on terror, the reality is that staying in Iraq is already damaging America's prospects, and to a greater degree and at a higher cost. The same was true in Vietnam.” (Sept.)