This book offers an exposition of the official American ideology of war in the Persian/Arabian Gulf: an ideology whose principal aims have been the manipulation and militarization of US public-political culture and the imperial reassertion of American global power. The book shows how the official war ideology was put in place by successive American presidents in order to justify the wars in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and against the Al Qaeda Islamist movement more generally. Written for a broad audience, Conquering Hearts and Minds offers an accessible analysis for a wide variety of readers interested in the relationship between America and the Middle East, the “war on terrorism,” the troubled state of international affairs and politics, and alternatives to endless war.

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Andrew Davison

Born in the United States in 1962, Andrew Davison earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Philosophy in 1984 from Lafayette College. He received his MA degree in Political Science from the University of Delaware in 1988 and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1995. He is presently Associate Professor of Political Science at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he teaches courses in political theory, politics in the Middle East, and international studies. At Vassar, he has also served as director of the multidisciplinary Program in International Studies and as co-director with Himadeep Muppidi, of a several year research and teaching grant entitled, “Europe and Its Boundaries.” He has held visiting teaching positions in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University in İstanbul since 1995, and in the Department of International Relations at Koç University in 2005. His publications include: Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration (Yale University Press, 1998); The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology: Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, and Islamism, 3rd edition, coauthored with David E. Ingersoll and Richard K. Matthews (Prentice Hall, 2001); Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? coauthored with Taha Parla (Syracuse University Press, 2004); and the documentary film, Leaps of Faith: Views on American Power, the War in Iraq, and Citizenship in a Time of War, co-directed with Benjamin Kalina (2004).