This just in! For those of you who can't get enough of the details of my summer reading, I am dropping the Packer book and picking up my well-worn though never read from cover to cover copy of Street Without Joy. The Iraq War is just too recent, I suppose. Reading about characters that I have decided opinions on because of events that occurred in my lifetime is not quite as interesting as reading about people I don't know or am not as opinionated on. Guns of August is working out beautifully, partly due, I'm sure, to having only a limited knowledge of the details of the outbreak of WW1. The Bernard Fall book will be good, too. Loved his book on Dien Bien Phu. Have plowed through it twice in the last 10 years. He was a good writer, died too young.
One thing I did pick up from the first 75 pages of Packer's book, though, was the neocons who pushed for the Iraq War argued that a regime change in Iraq and the subsequent evolution there to a democracy would lead, in a sort of domino effect, to the toppling of the other autocrats and dictators across the Arab world. This makes me wonder--did the Bush Doctrine lead to the recent 'Arab Spring'? Were Kristol, Wolfowitz et al. right after all? People smarter than me on this topic will have to sort out that answer, though...
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