Wednesday, July 10, 12:00 – 1:00 pm EST (LIVE ON ZOOM)
Book Talk: “Badlands: America’s Wars from Chicago to Gaza”
Dr. Osamah F. Khalil, Associate Professor of History & author of A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden
Moderated by Said Arikat, Washington Bureau Chief at Al Quds Daily Newspaper
Over the past half-century, Americans have watched their country extend its military power to what seemed the very ends of the earth. America’s might is felt on nearly every continent—and even on its own streets. Decades ago, the Wars on Drugs and Terror broke down the walls separating law enforcement from military operations. A World of Enemies tells the story of how an America plagued by fears of waning power and influence embraced foreign and domestic forever wars.
Professor Osamah Khalil argues that the militarization of US domestic and foreign affairs was the product of America’s failure in Vietnam. Unsettled by their inability to prevail in Southeast Asia, US leaders increasingly came to see a host of problems as immune to political solutions. Rather, crime, drugs, and terrorism were enemies spawned in “badlands”—whether the Middle East or stateside inner cities. Characterized as sites of endemic violence, badlands lay beyond the pale of civilization, their ostensibly racially and culturally alien inhabitants best handled by force.
Yet militarized policy has brought few victories. Its failures—in Iraq, Afghanistan, US cities, and increasingly rural and borderland America—have only served to reinforce fears of weakness. In this book talk, Khalil will trace the implications of these failures from Chicago to Gaza today.
Dr. Osamah F. Khalil is a Professor of History at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is the author of A World of Enemies: America's Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden (Harvard University Press, 2024) and America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Harvard University Press, 2016). Dr. Khalil is also the editor of United States Relations with China and Iran: Toward the Asian Century (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and is a frequent media commentator and contributor for local, national, and international media outlets.