I'm Glad to See

Sat, Apr 8, 2006

Phillip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles recognized by Perry Anderson:

In reality, the front of opinion that pressed for an assault on Iraq was far broader than a particular Republican faction. It included many a liberal and Democrat. Not merely was the most detailed case for attacking Saddam Hussein made by Kenneth Pollack, a functionary of the Clinton Administration. What remains by a long way the most sweeping theorization of a program for American military intervention to destroy rogue regimes and uphold human rights round the world is the work of Philip Bobbitt, nephew of Lyndon Johnson and another and more senior ornament of the national security apparatus under Clinton. Beside the 900 pages of his magnum opus, The Shield of Achilles, a work of vast historical ambition that ends with a series of dramatic scenarios of the coming wars for which America must prepare, the writers of The Weekly Standard are thin fare.

I remember citing it in an early version of my dissertation prospectus.