I certainly understand the issue about policy decisions making terrorism worse, but then I’m not sure that was entirely preventable. Did the United States make the conflict worse by entering the European theater in World War II? Definitely! If we hadn’t shown up, the fighting and would certainly have diminished. Of course, France and Poland may have looked a bit different today, perhaps spoken a different language, but at least the conflicts would certainly have been quelled. But which would you rather have?

It does appear that you’re not entirely anti-war, that you know that we are indeed in a war, but the quotes from your book in the linked review are rather short on specifics. You suggest that Iraq has become a place for terrorists to send their experts, that they’re using the war as a recruiting tool. But, again, I could say the same about Germany (sending their experts to the front lines with America, using the American invasion of France as a recruitment tool) or Japan (experts to the Pacific, recruitment).

Any such pushback is likely to increase the violence and give the enemy something to exploit for increasing their numbers. I don’t see that this means that we shouldn’t push back or that such pushing is automatically a policy blunder.

I admit, all I really have to go on in understanding your position are the few quotes from your book in the review you linked to, so I’m sure there’s much I’m missing from your complete position. I’m just working from the information on the page you pointed out.

Don’t forget Applebaum also said “While not entirely incorrect, the notion that President Bush has wasted international post-9/11 sympathy is not entirely accurate either.” So it is complicated and ambigious and I tried to address that in
To Defeat the Beast, Don’t Feed the Beast, which is a quote from Germany’s ex-Foreign Minister Fischer, who is now teaching at Princeton. He does not blame America for terrorism, but for making the conflicts worse due to policy mistakes. I think we can all agree that Europe and the United States need to increase all their efforts in the war on terrorism and have to choose the right and hard and painful rather than the wrong and easy and appeasing way to deal with the threats.