Fighting Over There

U.S. foreign policy has long been built on a dichotomy of an irreplaceable here and an expendable there. In his 2003 announcement of the military campaign in Iraq, George W. Bush declared that we would fight in the Middle East so we wouldnt have to fight on the streets of our cities. But what do the millions of people who live over there have to say about U.S. interventions and the displacement they provoke? In this pathbreaking study, Alaina Kaus analyzes literature by and about refugees who fled Southeast Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Middle East, in the wake of U.S. military occupation and economic intervention. Narratives by authors such as Lan Cao, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Demetria Martnez, Hctor Tobar, Dave Eggers, Mohsin Hamid, and Riverbend reveal contradictions in the human rights pledges that undergird U.S. foreign policy, which promote freedom while authorizing intervention and displacement, and favor market-based solutions over social justice and racial equality.