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Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: I read this book without knowing anything about the Arab world. Makiya does a great job explaining what he is talking about without being too "wordy". The book will change your views on the gulf war, both on the reasons for Iraq to invade Kuwait, as well as US involvement, and/or lack there of. A very interesting book that I would reccomend to anyone.
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Summary: A timely read...
Review: Kanan Makiya--an Iraqi-French dissident and intellectual--uses the personal experiences of those suffering under Saddam Hussein's brutality to explore what he calls the "cruelty and silence" that contemporary Arab intellectual and political culture has come to exhibit toward its own citizens in the Mideast. He criticizes the widespread misuse of Edward Said's "Orientalism" to justify a sense of unreflecting victimhood and automatic accusations of racism by the "West." Fully supportive of Palestinian rights, Makiya nonetheless questions whether the role of the PLO, so important in the formation of post-1967 Arab political consciousness, has served actually to enhance these self-defeating mechanisms--leading too many young Arabs to accept oppression and gross human rights violations by Saddam and other Mideast autocrats with silence, by constantly deflecting attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead. Of course, Makiya's book is a self-avowed polemic--using individual biographies to paint broad brush strokes about a range of very complex societies. But if the purpose of a polemic is to make one think, then Makiya's does so, eloquently. If there is a need for more self-cricism in the Arab "world" today--as well as the capacity to feel for the "other," whether Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Israeli or Palestinian, as well as women--then Makiya's polemic is an impassioned exercise in the very self-criticism he calls for. Makiya's motivation ultimately is not to accuse, but to call for freedom, human rights and democracy for all citizens of the Middle East.
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Summary: Important Book
Review: Makiya is not a Zionist or a Neo-Con, so it's hard for the Manichean anti-Americans to demonize his evidence and arguments against the totalitarian-drooling status quo in the Middle East. In the first half off the book, he relays heart-breaking anecdotes about sons unable to kiss their dying mothers after a chemical attack, children raped in front of their parents, prisoners forced to drink gasoline and shot so that they would explode, children surviving mass grave shooting, all in that "noble" Arab Gov't known as Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The second half of the book is a scathing indictment of the Edward Saids and Noam Chomskys of the world who rationalize the inhumanity all too prevalent in the Mid-East, specifically in Iraq, "Saddam was a victim, The U.S. is worse, Saddam's strong!" and all that junk. Because Makiya isn't a GOP Zionist, these criticisms are particularly strong and persuasive. The book is a much needed call on the part of Arabs and Muslims to adopt a Liberty-based morality instead of a relativistic, ethnic allegience based morality. A good book for all to read.
Rating:
Summary: Important Book
Review: Makiya is not a Zionist or a Neo-Con, so it's hard for the Manichean anti-Americans to demonize his evidence and arguments against the totalitarian-drooling status quo in the Middle East. In the first half off the book, he relays heart-breaking anecdotes about sons unable to kiss their dying mothers after a chemical attack, children raped in front of their parents, prisoners forced to drink gasoline and shot so that they would explode, children surviving mass grave shooting, all in that "noble" Arab Gov't known as Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The second half of the book is a scathing indictment of the Edward Saids and Noam Chomskys of the world who rationalize the inhumanity all too prevalent in the Mid-East, specifically in Iraq, "Saddam was a victim, The U.S. is worse, Saddam's strong!" and all that junk. Because Makiya isn't a GOP Zionist, these criticisms are particularly strong and persuasive. The book is a much needed call on the part of Arabs and Muslims to adopt a Liberty-based morality instead of a relativistic, ethnic allegience based morality. A good book for all to read.
Rating:
Summary: Now it's our turn to prove we believe our own words.
Review: Now that the American government is controlling Saddam's infamous Abu Ghraib/Ghurayb prison, the site of many atrocities like those described in Cruelty and Silence, we owe it to ourselves to study the crimes against humanity that were perpetrated there. Arguments about whether the old death chamber should be destroyed or maintained for future generations go without much notice in the United States, as do the reports of ongoing investigations to insure we follow legal guidelines in handling the prisoners we now hold at Abu Ghraib. We owe it to ourselves to operate this facility in a manner which testifies to our philosophy and way of life. And when we question ourselves, the cause in Iraq, the price we pay, the chances of success, we should understand the nature of the vicious regime which created the disfunctional and factionalized Iraqi society we see today. Cruelty and Silence helps us develop a long-term perspective to the challenges ahead.
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Summary: A realistic perspective on Iraq
Review: The book describe in gruesome detail what life is like in Iraq and much of the Arab world, for instance a woman whose husband was suspected of being anti-goverment who was tortured until it was determined she could no longer feel pain, and the killed. Or the day to day life in an Iraq prison, where beatings, starvation and living in squaler are not "torture." When they want to torture someone, it is far worse that that. The biggest crime is to disagree with the government. In Iraq Shiites, Kurds, Marsh Arabs and others are killed routinely. Yet intelligent people like Noam Chomsky and others feel that such behavior is justified because of "Arab pride" or cultural relativism. Makiya uses his sources as an Iraqi to describe the cruelty and then asks the question: why the silence? Since I have read the book I have seen many article berating the US for the embargo on Iraq. Yet the fact is that Iraq is exporting more oil now than before the embargo. The money is being used to continue the nightmare. At least it slows Saddam's ability to create weapons, for he would be sure to use them. This book is a welcome antidote from the steady stream of driviel from the academics.
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Summary: A witness to horror and courage
Review: This is one of the best books I have read all year. Ten years old, it is still agonisingly relevant. In its bearing witness to human cruelty, human indifference but also human courage, it is as unflinching, as passionate and as magnificent as the works of Primo Levi. Beautifully written, meticulously observed, focussed on people, not abstractions, it is a book that haunts me and will continue to do so for a long time to come. If you have any doubts at all about the rightness of invading Iraq, read this book. There will be no doubts left, only a terrible regret that the ousting of the Saddam regime was not done long, long ago.
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