Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq

Rating:
Summary: Basically this book sucks
Review: Basically this book sucks. Iraq is not Babylon and Babylon is not Iraq. Bush and the US had every right and justification to rid the world of Saddam and his regime. On simple humanitarian justifications alone, Ali's argument crumbles. Ali is an illiterate whose screed is a shameful pile of lies and distortions.

Rating:
Summary: Based on a laughable premise . "recolonisation" . Huh?
Review: Bush in Babylon is above all a history of Iraqi resistance against empires old and new. Imperial interventions in the past created a layer of collaborators who could only be removed via a revolution: but the tragedy of Iraq is also self-inflicted. The radical colonels, courageous communists and burnt-out Ba'athists failed to establish a stable and just democratic republic, thus enabling a return visit by imperialism

Rating:
Summary: Critics of this book
Review: I'd like to point out every critic of this book is American, except for one from Lebanon. It's one thing to specifically criticize facts claimed by the book, its entirely another simply to dismiss it as 'leftist drivel.' The majority of the educated and correctly informed population of the world would agree with most of the themes and statements made in this book. Anyone who disagrees is probably (in my opinion):

-A typical American brainwashed by his/her national media
-A supporter of imperialistic nations
-Someone who simply refuses to believe, that the great America is not considered so great by most of the world, and that the country's government, not its people, make decisions that anger the rest of the world, and that these decisions are made while keeping the citizens pacified through propaganda.

Rating:
Summary: The truth about Iraq and its history
Review: Tariq Ali does a masterful job of explaining the conflict in terms of colonization. He draws indesputably clear parallels between the British colonization of Iraq and America's recent ongoing attempt to do the same. His conclusion isnt pretty, but if you want to stop lying to yourself and really know whats going on, you should read this. Its an easy read and pretty short, never boring.

Rating:
Summary: A History Americans Should Know More About
Review: Tariq Ali of the New Left Review opens his latest book, Bush In Babylon: The Recolonization Of Iraq pondering why otherwise intelligent people in Britain and the United States are surprised that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis don't like being occupied. Written in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-British invasion of the oil rich Arab nation, Ali gives a lesson in Arab history few Americans know anything about. Most Americans probably hadn't heard of Iraq until after its invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the subsequent U.S. led military intervention to expel its forces from the small British created monarchy.

The second chapter is dedicated to Iraqi poetry and its resistance to occupation and tyranny. Here the reader is introduced to Iraqi poets in exile Saadi Youssef and Madhaffar al-Nawal. Youssef fled Iraq after Saddam Hussein became absolute ruler in 1979 because he did not want "to write bad poems," as Ali put it, and that it was "impossible to make peace with the new Inquisition and remain creative." In other words, Youssef didn't want to have to shine Hussein's shoes to survive under his coming tyranny.

In a letter to U.S. General Tommy Franks earlier this year Youssef refers to Saddam as the "imbecile" who "has denied me the air of my country for more than 30 years." The reader will no doubt find amusement when the author describes the Imbecile's past attempts to co-opt his poetic enemies abroad by inviting them to take part in state sponsored public readings. Now Youssef and his poetic comrades abroad are being denied the air of their country by the U.S-British occupation and their Iraqi collaborators. Ali provides his readers of Youssef's scathing indictment of the Iraqi collaborators, "The Jackals' Wedding" in English translation for the first time. Written on the occasion of the creation of the collaborationist Iraqi Governing Council, dedicated to his fellow Iraqi poet Mudhaffar al-Nawal and now a big hit on the Iraqi street.

Thanks in large part to mass media coverage of the Middle East most American's might think a majority of Arabs are militant Islamacists and suicide bombers. They're not (Even leading neo-con exponent of the War On Terror Daniel Pipes figures the number of Muslims who are hardcore fundamentalists is only 10-15 percent of the entire world's Muslim population). Ali gives a brief history of occupation and resistance in Iraq over the centuries, from the looting of Baghdad in the 12th century by the Monguls to the sacking of the city under the watch of the U.S. military earlier this year.

One of the defining features of Iraqi society in the 20th century has been its overwhelming secular character. The influence of the secular Soviet Union on the resistance to British colonialism ran very deep. The Iraq Communist Party (ICP), now an official collaborator with the current occupation, was one of the largest Communist parties in the Arab world. The other major secular player in Iraqi politics in the late 20th century would be the Ba'ath Socialist Party. The Ba'ath was created in Syria in 1943 by Michel Aflaq and Salad Bitar in part in reaction to the lack of support for colonial emancipation by the Soviet and Western Communist parties. It was these secular currents that formed the base for the ousting of the British installed post-colonial puppet government in 1958, which was Iraq's finest hour in the post-World War II decolonization period.

However, the hope promised by decolonization and independence were gradually swept away by Ba'athist despotism starting in 1963 and recolonization starting in 1990. The ICP was gradually murdered out of existence by the Ba'athists with U.S. support starting in 1963, culminating in the 1968 Ba'athist coup. These events paved the way for Saddam Hussein's rise to absolute power in 1979. Ali provides his readers with a very personal account of the Iraqi Ba'athists coup in 1968. Ali describes his 35 year quest to discover the fate of his friend, ICP leader Ahmed Zaki, a.k.a "Iraq's Che Guevara," who was killed in combat against the Ba'athists in the marshes of Southern Iraq during the year of the coup.

Ali's books are mostly polemical appeals and not scholarly undertakings. This is perhaps the greatest weakness of his current book and its predecessor, The Clash Of Fundamentalisms. The problem with this is that Ali is dealing with a history that few Americans have even a rudimentary knowledge of. I mean nothing Ali writes can't be backed up by the documentary record, but he needs to be more meticulous with documenting the claims he makes. Ali does make reference to the work of the late Hanna Batatu, who he argues wrote the best scholarly accounts of Iraq and Syria. It is with Batatu that readers will find a much more detailed scholarly analysis of these two closely related societies.

Ali is at his best when speaking to the more radical elements of the global anti-war movement that emerged to opposed the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. Ali ends his book with some advice for the millions of young activists who poured out onto the streets to oppose the invasion and occupation. Advice you won't read in a Todd Gitlin book. Ali argues that the global movement against neo-liberal economics, expressed most strongly in the emergence of the World Social Forum, needs to merge with the global anti-war movement. Ali points out that the most ardent exponents of neoliberalism, like Friedrich von Hayek, were also supporters of colonial conquest. In looking to the future of resistance to the Empire Ali closes Bush In Babylon by suggesting that "The movement that is needed can only be effective if it is global, and if it understands that the neo-liberal legs on which the imperial giant walks are not as strong as capitalist witch-doctors like to suggest."

Rating:
Summary: First rate stuff
Review: The British imposed "protectorate" on Iraq after World War one, writes Tariq Ali, greatly transformed the country. The British deregulated land ownership and it inevitably fell into the hands of the richest Iraqis.The British brutally suppressed native uprisings, including using poison gas. In order to keep Iraq weak,restricting its access to the Persian Gulf, the British the British created Kuwait, installing its brutal and corrupt clients, the Al Sabah family. The British took all the oil.

British intelligence called its client regime running Iraq "an oligarchy of racketeers." In 1948, the regime made an agreement to continue British economic and military domination of the country. This set off a nationwide uprising, culminating in a Tiananmen Square style massacre on a bridge in Baghdad.

Civil liberties were restricted most of the time. In 1954, the much despised Prime Minister Nuri Al Said held legislative elections most of whose seats were only contested by single pro-government candidates. This new parliament then rubber stamped Nuri's new laws which severely restricted free speech. After a July 1958 coup, the revolutionary regime of Abdul Karen Qassem launched a campaign of social welfare and empowered labor.. He placed the communists in a coalition government in a subordinate position to himself. The Iraqi commies were instructed by the Russians not to seize on their mass base to seize power so as not to upset Nasser. In 1948, writes Ali, Iraq's commies were the only in the Arab world not to follow the Soviets in supporting the creation of Israel.
T
he Ba'ath in February 1963 launched a coup. King Hussein--who often made use of CIA protection and such foreign mercenaries as the Pakistanis led by General Zia the future Pakistani dictator and instigator of Wahabbi terror sects who helped the King slaughter Palestinians in 1970, Ali observes-- told Mohammed Heikal in an interview that the Ba'ath's slaughter after the coup was augmented by CIA supplied lists of suspected communists. Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr seemingly admitted later that the CIA backed the coup.. Later in 1963, a weird Ba'ath congress passed a sort of anarchist platform and was disbanded violently on the initiative of Michel Aflaq. The Ba'ath were out of power for a few years. In 1972, the commies joined a coalition government with the Ba'ath, which at this point had close relations with the Soviet Block, but they, the Ba'ath continued to arrest and torture communists.. Ali tells the interesting story of Khalid Ahmed Zaki, who was part of a more libertarian splinter faction of the Iraqi commies.

Our soldiers, writes Ali, have been blowing up homes and other buildings of suspected "terrorists"--. probably often folks merely exercising their legitimate right to engage the military force occupying their country-- holding their families for ransom and placing barbed wire around villages to confine unrest. Of course, death squads seem about to be introduced in Sunni areas. Mr. Negroponte the U.S. pro-consul has plenty of experience with from his days in Honduras.. Ali writes sardonically that the goons of Narender Modi, the director of the anti-Muslim slaughter in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002,, could perhaps be offered by the BJP for service to commit the worst necessary atrocities.

Ali writes that the U.S. subjugation of the Philippines, 1898-1902, killed 20,000 Filipinos , then another 200,000 died from disease and famine. Expropriated land from the Catholic Church was distributed to a small pro-U.S. element who formed an oligarchy that relentlessly exploits the Filipino masses to this day. Ali writes that Filipinos are a large part of the menial labor being imported to Iraq to work on U.S. bases. In the same spirit a few years after the U.S. colonized the Philippines, Imperial Germany exterminated about 60,000 of 80,000 of the Herero people in SW Africa. The U.S., engaged in widespread chemical warfare in South Vietnam...., supported Suharto, dumped Depleted Uranium all over Iraq, causing cancer outbreaks. It gave Saddam material to make WMD's in the 80's and thought he was a swell fellow until 1990.

The final postscript to the paperback edition is devoted to the born again imperialist C. Hitchens, who wrote back in 1991 that Bush Sr. and his lieutenants should be tried for war crimes. The bombing destroyed "the web of water, electricity and sewage lines" that held Iraq together. Iraq became afflicted by mass epidemics and famine

There has been an election in Iraq. It has taken place in the middle of such U.S. atrocities as the destructive invasion of the Abu Hanifa mosque and war crimes as the emptying of the Fallujah hospitals because they were giving out info of civilian deaths from U.S. crimes. Another problem was that apparently some Iraqis were threatened with cutoff of their food rations if they didn't vote. Another was that in many areas turnout was low, contrary to official proclomoations. Whether it is the former Ba'ath goon Allawi or someone more independent, Ali writes that Iraq is envisioned by the U.S. to be locked into the economic structure of being the most privatized and free flowing place for capital on earth. It is such a formula that has caused such horrific disaster in the third world. And the U.S. military will probably not leave unless forced to. Ali notes that the continuing U.S. propping up of Mubarack and the Saudis and Yemenis, and so on. makes one question if the U.S. is really going to tolerate genuine democracy in Iraq.

I think Ali probably could have eliminated the first few chapters of the book......He calls for the Iraqi resistance to become something like the movements that have sprung up across Latin America. That is quite a long shot at the moment. The best hope for Iraq at the moment seems to rest around the grassroots movement around Sistani which pressued the U.S. to hold the election that it, the U.S. desperately tried to avoid.

Rating:
Summary: Very political poetry and history with dirty jokes
Review: This book isn't really about either George Bush, and there is no listing in the index for Babylon, which seems to have a meaning long established for Bible readers who have not become so fundamentalist that they imagine it was simply a city with an empire. This book was written a year ago, but there has been so little change in what Bush stands for in the last year that the message seems to be substantiated by every insurrectionary incident in the interim. The author has a point of view that should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to peace movements since World War Two and atomic diplomacy burst upon the scene in the 20th century. History is much older than the people who are now alive, and Tariq Ali seems to be dropping way back to 1823 to quote a letter by Heinrich Heine about `the hard times that are sure to come.' (p. 18). Some great poets have been concerned about their rulers, and the primary case is Osip Mandelstam, whose poem about Stalin before World War Two has still not been forgotten. The third footnote in this book relates how Stalin called the poet Boris Pasternak on the phone to ask about Osip, and suggests that Pasternak only survived because long before "he had praised one of the Georgian poets -- Joseph Djugashvili (Stalin's real name) -- as showing considerable promise. Another example, perhaps, of the premonitory power that exists in great poets." (p. 20, n. 3).

That might seem creepy to some readers, and I might seem unfair in using the word *creepy* mainly in my reviews of some works of Andy Warhol, but this book has a lot more quirks that might by described as such. If you try to look up *Mandelstam* in the index, under Makiya, Kanaan it just has "Osip 20" as if this book already knew which great poet should appear before Marcos, Ferdinand. Trying to read the entry for "Bush, George Sr. 135-7" is not all about the book, A WORLD TRANSFORMED by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft. The book is only in footnote 79 found at the bottom of pages 135 and 137, while page 136 has a picture at the top and 14 lines from Tony Harrison's poem:

I saw the charred Iraqi lean
towards me from bomb-blasted screen,

his windscreen wiper like a pen
ready to write down thoughts for men,

his windscreen wiper like a quill
he's reaching for to make his will.

This poem was printed in the `Guardian' and was posted on the internet when I checked this afternoon, and it is considerably longer than what is posted here or printed in this book. Though footnote 79 is about the first President Bush's book, Tariq Ali suggested reading that as an `account of how old friendships and clan loyalties determine top appointments in the United States, confirming Hanna Batatu's remark that the Syrian Ba'athists would not be out of place in US politics.' Footnote 80 on the same page about Blair `meeting with four senior journalists from the Guardian after the 2003 war' might be considered worse than creepy if you can figure out what it means.

I always find things that I can't say more exciting than whatever you might have expected to hear in church, so looking at the cities on the maps in Iraq inside the front cover, and also in Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan inside the back cover, I noticed that none of them was called a holy city on these maps. I see articles from several newspapers on the internet, and would not want to blame any particular paper, but it seems to me I just read some account of someone "in the holy city of Karbala." On the map in this book, Karbala and Hillah are closer to Babylon than Ramadi, Fallujah, Baghdad, Najah, or Tikrit, but I was at a loss on how any American paper knows a holy city from any other place that far from home. I did not expect to find any mention of holy cities in early accounts of the war, as this is something which I only started to worry about recently, but I did find some evidence that this author might have a clue or two about that. At the beginning of Chapter 3, An Oligarchy of Racketeers, holy cities are first mentioned in an account of the domination of the Arab world by the Ottoman empire.

` . . . the victory of the Turkish artillery and muskets over the badly equipped and poorly led army of the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, following which the holy cities of Mecca and Medina became part of the Empire . . . The preachers were the first to change sides and record their loyalty to the new order. The week after the city fell, the Friday prayers in all of Cairo's mosques began thus:

"O Lord! Uphold the Sultan, son of the sultan, ruler over both lands and the two seas, conqueror of both hosts, monarch of the two Iraqs, minister of the two Holy Cities, the victorious Sultan Selim Shah. . . ." ' (p. 43).

The only listing for jackals in the Index is for a poem, `the jackals' wedding' 34-36, which establishes what the author means when he uses the term throughout the book. In case you aren't clear on that, the picture on page 37 has the caption:

`The jackals' wedding: members of Iraq's so-called Governing Council, central Baghdad, 13 July 2003.'

I definitely agree with what this book says about sanctions, even if it might overstate `a water purification crisis and increase the country's death rate. This was openly discussed within the Clinton administration and approved.' (p. 140). Water in Sadr City is probably worse now than what is described in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book Though Somewhat Bitter in Taste
Review: This is amazing to read reviews after reading the book. I like books from Tariq Ali, because of two reasons. Firstly, his writing is crisp and prose is enchanting and secondly he does research very well on what he plans to write. The reviews here provided are mostly very biased and doesn't encompass any logical or intellectual landscape. This is unfortunate if we altogether reject somebody's thoughts because he/she doesn't think the way as somebody else wants him to think. This is another type of fundametalism and Ali aptly dealt with this topic in his another book "Clash of Fundamentalisms". As Bill Clinton writes in his book --My Life-- "What might prove a fun game for powerful may cause humiliation to the weak". This is best depicted in US-UK invasion to Iraq. Regime changed--People killed ( Did they ask anybody to come and kill them ?). What is the point, why no body now talks of Weapon of mass Destruction rather it is very conveniently forgotten. Now how can we justify a war where the intelligence has been proved as flawed. Who cares about Saddam ?? No body...No eye had any tears for him when he was de-throned. He was a murderer but what happened next ? How can we justify two wrongs as one right. Was this a small fun for 'Strong'? Why don't we think.. The media is always with the powerful...all the information flow is from West to East and what Western media says is true, that is absolute truth and any dissenting voice is just a ridicule. Pity. Now over here, everybody is looking at this book from a strong partisan and forgive me but from religous approach too. The US based reviews are correct from their point of view because this is what has been told to them through media 24x7. Where else one should get the information except through available means .. and what of somebody controls those means to grind his own axe? I have given 4 points to this book beacause sometime Ali goes overboard too. In the flow of his eloquency sometime he misses to identify fact from his own analysis. Overall a good job, well done Ali!

Rating:
Summary: Why do these idiots hate America
Review: We went to Iraq to save the Iraqi's from that horrible dictator and mass murderer Sadam. God has blessed America, a Christian nation. We have the best system in the world, and it is our charity and Christian goodness that we want to share it with others and give the Arabs democracy - something that in the 200+ years of the history of our great nation, no Arab country has managed to give themselves. Our soldiers have died not just for Americans, but for Iraqis as well - like Christ died for us sinners. We have freed Iraqi women and children from the horrible chemical attacks of Sadam and his perverted sons. Iraqi women, like all Arab women, are forced to wear black all day and cover their faces because they are truly not free because the Islam does not make people free. So we have liberated them. We have spent billions of dollars in a war to liberate a nation and to make peace in the world and to protect our best friend Israel from terrorist evils. Remember America lost 3000+ AMERICAN CITIZENS in an undeclared war (like Perl Harbor) by terrorists from that part of the world. Of course this book is just garbage and comes from outside the USA.

Rating:
Summary: Why do these idiots hate America
Review: We went to Iraq to save the Iraqi's from that horrible dictator and mass murderer Sadam. God has blessed America, a Christian nation. We have the best system in the world, and it is our charity and Christian goodness that we want to share it with others and give the Arabs democracy - something that in the 200+ years of the history of our great nation, no Arab country has managed to give themselves. Our soldiers have died not just for Americans, but for Iraqis as well - like Christ died for us sinners. We have freed Iraqi women and children from the horrible chemical attacks of Sadam and his perverted sons. Iraqi women, like all Arab women, are forced to wear black all day and cover their faces because they are truly not free because the Islam does not make people free. So we have liberated them. We have spent billions of dollars in a war to liberate a nation and to make peace in the world and to protect our best friend Israel from terrorist evils. Remember America lost 3000+ AMERICAN CITIZENS in an undeclared war (like Perl Harbor) by terrorists from that part of the world. Of course this book is just garbage and comes from outside the USA.