Oil Crusade

Oil Crusade - America Through Arab Eyes by Abdulhay Yahya Zalloum. A great book. Well, not really. I found this to be horrible in fact. Super shallow, super superficial, the world conspiracy with all relevant ingredients present (the US, Jews...you know the deal). Zalloum tries to explain how the US is dominating world politics, how it tries to ensure that this will be true for the future as well. He fails miserably at convincing the reader.

The sad thing about this really is that he has a point. He touches on a lot of issues that need to be explored further and reevaluated in their meaning as to whether the West is hypocritical or not. American one-sided support for Israel, the dominance of lobbyists in Washington, big-name companies in the Middle East, the purpose of proxy wars that the US has (and is) lead(ing) all over the world. Lots of topics to discuss. The problem just is that Zalloum discredits himself through abstruse connections (seemingly every misterious death over the last 50 years was committed by Mossad, I mean I knew they were good, but that good?), over-simplifications and simple factual errors (Adenauer got voted out of office? Really now?). I read this as part of the preparation for my master thesis, let's just hope that future books will be more rewarding and less pointless.

I speed-walked through this, if you read it, race through it, and pick up something better quickly.