Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

Mamdani presents a sweeping critique of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 eras, focusing particularly on Iraq and Palestine. Mamdani argues that, far from shifting course after the Cold War, the US simply recalibrated its strategies to continue targeting what it viewed as threats to its global dominance. Namely, “militant nationalist regimes” (178) in the Global South. The post-9/11 era allowed for an even more aggressive turn, with the US abandoning proxy wars for direct invasions in the name of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy.

Mamdani traces this evolution through America’s relationship with Iraq. Initially, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s regime to counter Iran’s Islamic revolution. This included providing Iraq with chemical weapons materials and military intelligence, despite knowledge of Iraq’s use of such weapons on both Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians. Later, when Saddam outlived his utility to American strategy by invading Kuwait, the US responded with a brutal war in which the US “committed many war crimes” (184). This was followed by a regime of UN-backed sanctions that Mamdani deems genocidal, especially due to their effect in causing the “mass murder of hundreds of thousands, mainly children” (187). The sanctions, framed as humanitarian, actually centralized control under the very regime they claimed to weaken and withheld essential goods.