The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq.

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

Newfoundland-born and London-based journalist Gwynne Dyer has earned a substantial reputation for his foreign affairs columns and military expertise. He writes well and clearly, and, if his anti-American and anti-Israeli biases are usually apparent, he is too intelligent not to let the facts speak for themselves. This book, published in 2007, tries to examine the mess the Americans left in the Middle East after Iraq. Writing before the “surge” began to turn the fighting around, Dyer nonetheless makes clear that the U.S. war gravely hurt American prestige around the world and inflicted serious damage on the United Nations and on the international rule of law. What could make matters worse? Only an American attack on an Iran, which, Dyer argues not very convincingly, is not likely to be trying very hard to produce nuclear weapons—and, if it is, is more concerned with Pakistan than Israel. Perhaps. But the difficulty with predictions is that they are subject to events, and if Dyer was reissuing this book in 2009, his conclusions might well be different.