I can't recommend the text at all, but this article has some great images of Iraq in the middle of the last century.
Baghdad, 1956
Basra, 1950
Mosul, 1963
A meat market in Mosul, 1959.
Kirkuk, 1956
I do recommend this article by Roqayah Chamseddine:
Jean Bricmont’s powerful book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War,
written during the occupation of Iraq, is a timely historical critique
of Western interventionism, one worth examining as the United States of
America moves once more in the direction of military entanglement in
Iraq. Bricmont, a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at The
Université catholique de Louvain, discusses the ideological factors
which legitimize military action in response to humanitarian abuses and
“in defense of democracy” (p. 7). — “This is the discourse and the
representation that must be challenged in order to build a radical and
self-confident opposition to current and future wars.” The humanitarian
rationales offered under the banner of there being “a responsibility to
protect” have only increased since the end of World War II, and methods
to reinforce such motivations have grown progressively coercive.
Bricmont introduces a formula which will come to define “humanitarian
imperialism:” when A exercises power over B, he does so for B's "own
good" (p. 11). This is the creed of philanthropic power — which peddles
and rationalizes war as a column maintaining international order — and
which continues to define the very nature of international conflict
post-World War II. Interventionism is no longer argued as being
warranted in the name of Christianity, Bricmont argues, but what he
calls ideological reinforcements: democracy and human rights. For
example, despite former US President George W. Bush’s frequent use of
religious imagery, the call to invade Iraq was not only drenched in
chilling white saviourism but an overwhelming exceptionalism which
contends that only military efforts led by the United States of America
would bring about a just liberation and lasting stability for the people
of Iraq. “[T]he dangers to our country and the world will be overcome.
We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace,”
George W. Bush stated in 2003. “We will defend our freedom. We will
bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”
The horrors inflicted upon the people of Iraq are still understated, and
since 2003 the bloodshed has not stopped. When Obama delivered his
speech in 2011 celebrating the US military withdrawal, there were
bombings and shootings in Baghdad, in Mosul, in Kirkuk and in Tal Afer.
While the Iraqi people were preparing burial shrouds Obama was
reaffirming the previous administration’s claims that the US left for
the Iraqi people a stable country, had forged a lasting peace and made
the world more secure. Amongst the congratulatory frill and repugnant
nationalism Obama did make one salient point — that the US legacy in
Iraq will endure and that it shall be remembered. The legacy of this
tragic and implacable war will live on in the wombs of Iraqi women who
bear children with congenital birth defects
as a result of depleted uranium; the riddled bodies of those now
suffering from cancer due to the toxic munitions used by the US military
and finally in the land of Iraq, which has been devoured and polluted
by the chemical weapons the US unleashed during its occupation.
I always wanted to go to Iraq before the war....
ReplyDeleteI was only barely aware of Iraq before the war. But I would have liked to have seen it.
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