Jordanian Exceptionalism Book

Peters is a brilliant hard-eyed writer, who looks head-on, with brutal honesty, at how wars are won and lost, in this case, the episodic, but never ended war between two religions/civilizations: the West and the Middle East - the former an amalgam of Greek and Jewish civilizations, embodied in Christianity and the latter, Islam, a religion which is also a complete way of life and form of political organization. (And as recent events in Europe have shown, how will we live together when we live together).

Peters writes about what the implications of a nuclear-armed Iran, the deterioration of Israel's military (how the citizen soldier no longer serves the country), why America loses, tactically, so many wars against insurgent tactics, how current military planning and tactics focus on small evils and thereby abet large ones.  And overall, what are the implications of the eradication of genuine historical studies in our schools: that we are raising a generation of people who do not see patterns and trends, who have little comprehension of the sacrifices required to win a war, and the true damage of the arrogance of those so uneducated on both left and right.  The book is beautifully written, by a man who knows what it takes to win or to lose a war.