THE FEDERALIST
Martin Kramer Knows Why America Keeps Mucking Up The Middle East
by Shepard Barbash
October 28, 2016

…Kramer’s latest book, “The War on Error,” released last week, exposes the mistakes that historians, journalists, filmmakers, and others have made doing history in the region, and shows that our vision has only grown worse. “For the last thirty years, new myths (in the guise of ‘new history’) have replaced old ones,” he writes. This is lamentable because “the distortion of history is more grievous than a failed prediction”—producing a “banality” in policymaking “so ubiquitous that we no longer notice it.” So is it any wonder that Americans have been caught flatfooted by the Arab “Spring,” the rise of ISIS, Iraq’s unraveling, regime change in Egypt, upheaval in Turkey, Syria’s disintegration, Russia’s aggressions—indeed by almost everything? READ MORE