Axis of Evil: The War on Terror
(Pen and Sword – May 2005)
It is edited by Paul Moorcraft with contributing editors Gwyn Winfield and John Chisholm. It is an illustrated hardback containing 304 pages; price £19.99. It is available from the publishers and all major bookshops. The US edition is published by Casemate.
Axis of Evil examines the dramatic world events which unfolded from 11 September 2001 to the end of the official occupation of Iraq in the summer of 2004. This is the first book to have been published on the war on terror that contains personal contributions from a large number of leading military and political leaders.
Many of the interviews are conducted by Paul Moorcraft. The publication also contains accounts of his travels in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine/Israel and Sudan.
The book offers fresh perspectives on the arguments against the war with contributions from George Galloway and Tariq Aziz, who denied – before the war – the presence of weapons of mass destruction. On the other side, Richard Perle provides an arresting example of US over-confidence. Axis of Evil contains a brilliant critique of what the US did wrong and the British got right in the initial occupation of Iraq.
In Afghanistan key decision-makers such as Donald Rumsfeld are quizzed on the failures to find Osama bin Laden, while the aims of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams are examined in detail. One of the war aims – curbing the production of opium – has been an abject failure. Perhaps the frankest exposé in the book is former US Ambassador Tim Carney’s damning comments on the bungles in the initial administration of Iraq.
The book also examines the reasons for military success and the most rapid armoured advance in history.
Axis of Evil also looks at the current readiness of homeland security in the UK. Could Britain be attacked on the same scale as 9/11?
The book concludes with a warning – a chilling examination of the existing threat from chemical, biological and radiological weapons – and a radical suggestion: whether a deal should be struck and that perhaps some of al Qaeda’s demands may be reasonable. Some compromise with more moderate Islamic thought may detach some of the radicals and thus prevent a major clash of civilisations.