Rag Radio: Roy Casagranda on How U.S. Actions in Iraq Set the Table for ISIL

Roy Casagranda, an expert on Middle East politics and history, joins Thorne Dreyer for a second week to talk about the roots of the crisis with jihadist terror in Iraq, Syria, and the region.

In our first interview, Roy discussed Syrian history and how Western actions dating back to the division of the Ottoman Empire and FDR’s post-Battle of Bulge orientation towards Saudi Arabia helped lay the groundwork for the problems today.

On this show we talk about how U.S. actions in Iraq set the table for ISIL. Roy explains why Iraq invaded Kuwait and why the U.S. reacted like it did in 1991; the role of economic sanctions and the myth of weapons of mass destruction; and the real reasons for the second Iraq war. Finally, he lays out what might be an ideal solution to the crisis with ISIL and then suggests what is the most we can realistically hope for. The Rag Blog’s Alice Embree joins us again this week.

Roy Casagranda is an Associate Professor of Government at Austin Community College where he teaches U.S. and Texas politics. His areas of research include Middle East history and politics, U.S. foreign policy, political philosophy, and warfare. He is currently completing an ad hoc interdisciplinary Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. Casagranda serves as an analyst on Middle East Political Affairs for the Austin ABC affiliate, KVUE, and has written about Arab and U.S. politics and history for several publications in Iran.

Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The host and producer of Rag Radio, Thorne Dreyer, is a prominent Austin-based activist and writer who was a pioneer of the ’60s underground press movement. The show’s engineer and co-producer is Tracey Schulz and the staff photographer is Roger Baker. The syndicated show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP in Austin, and is later rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Houston Pacifica’s KPFT HD-3 90.1-FM, and by KKRN, 88.5-FM in Round Mountain, CA — and is a featured podcast at VT. All Rag Radio podcasts can be found at the Internet Archive. Contact: [email protected]

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