“Never Forget” is a cliche that was used to memorialize those lost on September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, those throwing around this cliche want history to begin on the day they died as a justification for the wars that followed. Those 3,000 lives are certainly worth memorializing because their death was preventable. The deaths of hundreds of thousands in the decade that followed were as well.
What follows is a bibliography on noninterventionist foreign policy. Most of these are history books. Reading about events and decisions will lead one to conclude that a central planner is as bad at war and foreign policy as they are at economic interventions.
The Road to 9-11
- The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
- (This was turned into a miniseries on Hulu that’s great if you’re not a reader)
Books by Ali Soufan
- The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda
- Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State
Books by Chalmers Johnson
- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
- The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
- Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
- Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope
Books by Andrew Bacevich
- American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy
- The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
- The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II
- The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
- Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War
Others
- Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer
- Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America by Michael Scheuer
- Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert A. Pape
- The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
- Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
Propaganda
- War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
- Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
- Media Control, Second Edition: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky
American Foreign Policy
- A Century of War – Lincoln, Wilson, & Roosevelt by John V. Denson
- Presidential War Power by Louis Fisher
- Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage
- Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
- The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot
- Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky
- The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963 by Michael Swanson
- Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
- The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
- Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Harry Elmer Barnes
- How Diplomats Make War by Francis Neilson
- As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn
Iraq and Afghan Wars
- Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor
- The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
- Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton
- Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 by Thomas E. Ricks
- The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
- Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Steve Coll
- Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh
