Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy

The dramatic insider account of why we made the decision to invade Iraq, the motivations of the key people who drove it, and the frustrations of those who tried and failed to stop it, leading to the most costly misadventure in US history.

Leap of Faith is the first comprehensive and objective history of the decision to invade Iraq. Based on nine years of research, over 100 interviews with participants in the drama, and information from hundreds of U.S. and British declassified documents, Mike Mazarr shows how the most impressive and experienced foreign policy team made the greatest strategic folly of the century.

Mazarr reveals that a combination of messianic certainty, cultural deference, and administrative infighting and incompetence allowed the decision to be made without any examination of the ways in which it could unravel. So when it did, no one had any answers.

Leap of Faith is a parable of how good intentions can go wrong, and a cautionary tale about any international entanglement.