Confronting Saddam Hussein, Melvyn P. Leffler
Confronting Saddam Hussein, Melvyn P. Leffler
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Confronting Saddam Hussein
George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq

Author: Melvyn P. Leffler

Narrator: Christopher P. Brown

Unabridged: 11 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/28/2023

Synopsis

America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post–Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations.

In Confronting Saddam Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Rather than stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion.

About Melvyn P. Leffler

Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on US relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind, which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power, which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad coedited the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is coeditor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World. Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015. He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Barry on July 09, 2023

Melvyn Leffler attempts to portray a balanced chronicle of acutely unbalanced times. He weaves a path between one narrative that proposes that George W Bush and his advisors simply used 9/11 as an excuse to carry out an agenda that existed since the beginning of the administration, and a 2nd narrati......more

Goodreads review by Sivan on March 04, 2023

Highly informative, precise and clear. For the first time I am reading an account on the Iraq war that doesn’t immediately display blatant bias. Great book, highly recommend!......more

Goodreads review by Michael on February 29, 2024

I'd give this three-and-a-half stars. This is an interesting book, but Leffler gets bogged down in the bureaucratic infighting and so the book becomes a chore to read. (Pet peeve -- Leffler uses the abbreviation OSD, which apparently means "Office of the Secretary of Defense." This is something I have......more

Goodreads review by Robert on July 09, 2023

This study lucidly and quickly offers an account of the factors that led to the invasion of Iraq ordered by George W. Bush. Although written by an academic historian, it reads like something by one of the better journalists who have pondered the Iraq fiasco. Leffler is particularly good at portrayin......more

Goodreads review by Gregory on May 27, 2023

A very sympathetic view of George W. Bush and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Leffler argues that Bush was the decider as he always said, meaning that he, not Cheney or Rumsfeld, determined administration policy. No the administration was not pre-occupied with Iraq. They really had no urgent fo......more

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