A sweeping and authoritative narrative' The Long Road to Baghdad places the Iraq War in the context of U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam' casting the conflict as a chapter in a much broader story of American diplomatic and military moves in the region. With a keen grasp of sprawling subject matter (Kirkus)' Lloyd Gardner' one of the nation's premier diplomatic historians' illuminates a vital historical thread connecting Walt Whitman Rostow's defense of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia' Zbigniew Brzezinski's renewed attempts to project American power into the arc of crisis (with Iran at its center)' and' in the aftermath of the Cold War' the efforts of two Bush administrations' in separate Iraq wars' to establish a landing zone in that critically important region. Far more disturbing than a reckless adventure inspired by conservative ideologues or a simple conspiracy to secure oil' Gardner's account explains the Iraq War as the necessary outcome of a half - century of doomed U.S.

policies. A well - argued study that gives a sharp historical and intellectual framework for understanding the current Iraq war (Publishers Weekly)' The Long Road to Baghdad has sobering implications for a positive resolution of the present quagmire.