Owls and Eagles

Leading national security strategist Harlan K. Ullman is well known for his aggressive, no nonsense approach to U.S. foreign policy. By his own description, he demands a smarter, realistic policy, one that is ''informed by fact and reason and not ideology and tough when it must be.'' The time span of the author''s columns, largely for the Washington Times , reprinted in this book is no coincidence. Owls and Eagles begins with the onset of the controversial U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003 and ends twenty months later, shortly after President George W. Bush''s reelection. What overly ambitious, under informed goals inspired the U.S. to launch the preemptive war? What were the domestic and electoral factors that led to the president''s decision? And, perhaps most importantly, what are the consequences of the unilateral war to the standing of the United States in the global community and to the legacy of George W. Bush? These are the provocative questions contemplated in this important book. In the end, the author has achieved his goal of ''informing the public and provoking them to think and to question how well or badly our nation was faring in the fight to keep us safe and secure.''