I've gone through a fair amount of the voluminous cottage industry of fiction based on the War on Terror, and the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and subsequent occupations, that occurred from 2001 to 2021.
But now I'm looking to see if there's any fiction written before 9/11 that deals with similar ideas about large-scale US military, political and social interventions and occupations across the Greater Middle East. I'm curious to compare the authors' imaginations with what actually happened in real life, and how the fictional tropes and literary conventions used may vary from the fiction based on real post-9/11 events.
(I became interested in the topic after reading Tom Clancy's "Executive Order", which features a 9/11-reminiscent suicide attack by an aircraft, though this was done by a Japanese pilot crashing a commercial jet into the Capitol building during the State of the Union and wiping out the President and most of Congress. Naturally the US's response is quite a bit different in this scenario.)
The reasons that the authors use that cause America to go to war in the Middle East can be similar or different from what really happened: eg, terrorist attacks, biowarfare, seizing oilfields, a new set of Barbary Wars, piracy and kidnapping, an administration diverting domestic conflicts through overseas wars, American civil war, insane President, etc, etc. It's wide open.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
by Worried-Boot-1508