The mess they made : the Middle East after Iraq / Gwynne Dyer

Introduction -- The heart of the mess -- Why Iraq? -- The threat to the old order -- The future of Iraq -- The terrorist bandwagon -- Iran's putative bomb -- Not the Shia Crescent, the Islamist revolutionaries -- Israel's dilemma -- Crawling from the wreckage.

Allawi is not exaggerating. The disastrous American invasion of Iraq that has led to the destruction of the Iraqi state and the subsequent defeat of U.S. military power has finally destabilized the entire Middle East---a region that has been tightly controlled by European and American powers and that has changed little, politically, in forty years. But, in losing the war in Iraq, the United States has lost the will to maintain the status quo in the Middle East, and the forces unleashed by the destruction of Iraq will go on to shape the future of the region in a way that no one can predict. Publisher description.