Devil's Game: How The United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

Book Summary

The first complete account of America's most dangerous foreign policy miscalculation--60 years of support for Islamic fundamentalism--is the gripping story of America's misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. "The most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam."--Salon.com "Devil's Game" is the first comprehensive account of America's misguided efforts, stretching across decades, to dominate the strategically vital Middle East by courting and cultivating Islamic fundamentalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, and foreign service officials, Robert Dreyfuss follows the trail of American collusion from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s Egypt, to links with Khomeini and Afghani jihadists, to longstanding ties between radical Islamists and the leading banks of the West. The result is as tragic as it is paradoxical: originally deployed as pawns to foil nationalism and communism, extremist mullahs and ayatollahs now dominate the landscape, thundering against freedom of thought, science, women's rights, secularism--and their former patron. Chronicling a history of double-dealing, cynical exploitation, and humiliating embarrassment that continues to this day, "Devil's Game" reveals a pattern that, far from furthering democracy or security, ensures a future of blunders and blowback.

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