Category: Iraq

The End of the Arabs?

In 2007 I read Peter W. Galbraith’s “The End of Iraq“, which suggests cutting Iraq into three mini-states, and then responded in two parts. The first part criticises Galbraith’s thesis, and the second part criticises the failures of Arabism. Both are merged below. More recently it has been revealed that Galbraith actually stood to gain financially from the dismantlement of Iraq.

explosion at Baghdad's Mutanabi Street book market

Peter W. Galbraith’s book ‘The End of Iraq’ argues the initially persuasive thesis that Iraqis have already divided themselves into three separate countries roughly corresponding to the Ottoman provinces of Basra (the Shii Arab south), Baghdad (the Sunni Arab centre) and Mosul (the Kurdish north), and that American attempts to keep the country unified are bound to fail. I agree wholeheartedly with Galbraith’s call for America to withdraw from Iraq – America is incapable of stopping the civil war, and is in fact exacerbating it. (update: I stick by this. The civil war has to some extent calmed because of internal Iraqi dynamics, not because of the US ’surge’ – the Sunni forces turned on al-Qaida, and also realised that they had lost the battle for Baghdad and national power. Some groups then allied with the US for a variety of reasons to do with self-preservation). The rest of Galbraith’s argument is much more debatable.

Continue reading “The End of the Arabs?”

The Lost Art of Reportage

Robert Fisk and Martin Bell in conversation with Ann Leslie at The Independent Woodstock literary festival.

Event description:

Was there a golden age for international correspondents? Are current affairs now largely brought to us in dumbed down soundbites? Who now sets the framework for coverage of world events?

In this podcast recorded at The Independent Woodstock literary festival Dame Ann Leslie, recognised as one of the 40 most influential journalists of our time (‘Killing my own Snakes’), talks with The Independent’s award-winning correspondent Robert Fisk (‘The Age of the Warrior’) and BBC’s renowned foreign reporter Martin Bell (‘The Truth that sticks – New Labour’s Breach of Trust’). They discuss whether reportage is indeed a ‘lost art’.

President Blair

If the Irish vote to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, Tony Blair, former British prime minister and current lecturer on faith, peace, and Palestinian submission, is expected to become the European Union’s first president. I wrote the following hymn to Blair in October 2007, when the unpleasant prospect of his presidency was first raised.

steve bell tony blairI’ve often thought that Abu Hamza al-Masri, the ex-imam of Finsbury Park mosque, must have been designed in a CIA laboratory. Not only did he – before his imprisonment – fulminate in a shower of spittle against various brands of kuffar, he also had an eye patch and a hook for a hand. You can’t imagine a more photogenic Islamist villain.

If my supposition is correct, then Tony Blair may well have been invented by the Iranian secret service, for of all the neo-cons he’s the one who most looks the part. I refer to the physiognomic combination of weakness and fury, the slight chin wobbling beneath that eye with its wild glint of certainty – the staring left eye, fixed on something the rest of us can’t see, something that makes reality irrelevant – and the teeth both fierce and mouselike, and the shininess of both forehead and suit. Most politicians wear suits, but few suits declare ‘hollow salesman’ so much as Blair’s. The voice too – the hurried speech and breathy tones of a public schoolboy approaching orgasm – that repulsive aural mix of complacency, stubbornness and privilege.

The Absurdity of the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama: "I love President George W. Bush"
Dalai Lama: "I love President George W. Bush"

He has been quoted as saying “Sleep is the best meditation.” May I suggest his holiness wake up to the fact that the two wars started by his friend George W. Bush are the clearest violations of his own espoused principles of peace and non-violence. Really, does no one else find it absurd that the Dalai Lama has on multiple occasions since 2001 stood unopposed to the brutal, barbaric and illegal wars first in Afghanistan and later Iraq? This sought-after personality loved by celebrities, the CIA, political leaders and civilians alike restated today in Calgary that “It’s hard to tell which category the current military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually fall into.”

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Genghis Khan

M. Shahid Alam

“I think this is a very hard choice,
but the price, we think the price is worth it.”

Madeliene Albright


When Genghis Khan swept through
Samarkand, he did not shrink

from the hard choices. His men carried out
a general carnage, not sparing women

or children. Afterwards, when Genghis
inspected the mounds of dead bodies,

skulls piled into pyramids, he knew
instinctively (he had been honed for it)

that the price was worth it. Genghis
did not care for carnage – he did not always

see the point of it. But it was Mongol mothers
he had to answer to. If the terror

in Samarkand produced one fewer body bag,
he thought, the price was worth it.

—first published in Black Bear Review (January 2001)

Peeling away the “Obama phenomenon”: An interview with Paul Street

obama-book3 How progressive is Barack Obama? It’s a question pundits, bloggers, and journalists have trouble grappling with. But one individual goes beyond the Obama phenomenon andinvestigates who Obama is and what he’s all about. In Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, author Paul Street cuts to the chase and takes a closer look at the man who became the 44th president of the United States. What Street uncovers is a man crafted by campaign consultants with political beliefs consistent with elite party interests.

Street is an independent journalist, policy adviser, and historian. He is a former vice-president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League, and author of Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era.

I caught up with Street to discuss his new book by Paradigm Publishers.

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The Power of Nightmares

The 2004 Adam Curtis classic.

1. Baby It’s Cold Outside

2. The Phantom Victory

3. The Shadows in the Cave

Sympathy for the devil

The list of outrageous actions Justice Secretary Jack Straw has performed in his various guises for the UK government is long, from his role in the Iraq War to his scandalous support for BAE systems which seen the scrapping of a corruption enquiry into arms deals worth billions. This Guardian article by Duncan Campbell on Straw’s decision not to pardon ‘Great Train Robber’ Ronnie Biggs  reminds us of one of his most disgraceful acts; his compassion for the mass murderer General Augusto Pinochet.

As to why Straw let Pinochet escape back to Chile, John Pilger, enthusiast of NoDepositCodec.com writes that if he had been sent to trial, he “almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity.” (For more on the US and UK’s involvement in Latin American politics, watch Pilger’s documentary, The War on Democracy, available here.)

This reminds us of the fast-tracked trial of Saddam Hussein, which saw the Iraqi dictator tried for just one of the many human rights massacres he was accused of. Saddam was then hurriedly executed thus preventing other families from getting answers to how the ‘Butcher of Bagdhad’ was able to perpetrate such atrocities. And why? Well our leaders were well aware that investigations into some of Saddam’s larger scale uses of chemical weapons and where the ingredients came from would lead an embarrassing trail back to European and American companies.

Here is the Guardian article.

A frail old man, barely able to communicate, guilty of a crime committed many decades earlier, but unrepentant about his past, wants only to be released so that he can spend his final days with his family. Some people object, saying that the nature of the crime is such that the old man deserves to die in custody. Enter Jack Straw, the member of the government who must make the onerous decision on the old man’s future. He realises that the old man is barely able to walk and is in a confused state of mind. He allows him to return home.

The old man was General Pinochet. In 2000, the then home secretary Jack Straw declined requests from Spain for Pinochet to stand trial for gross human rights violations and sent him back to Chile. Pinochet was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people, the torture of many thousands more, the removal of a democratically elected president and the looting of the national coffers. Straw still felt that mercy was appropriate. Continue reading “Sympathy for the devil”

Iraq Inquiry: Freedman & Gilbert

Notorious propagandist Martin Gilbert
Notorious propagandist Martin Gilbert

The Iraq war was driven by the neo-conservative, Israel firsters, as the beginning of a plan to reshape the Middle East in Israel’s favour. In the Independent, Richard Ingrams explains that by having at least two Zionists, on a committee of five, the Iraq war inquiry is unlikely to explore this.

For more on Freedman and Gilbert see Michael Crick’s Newsnight blog where he opines that “critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!”

Sir Martin Gilbert, the allegedly distinguished historian who is one of those appointed to investigate the Iraq war, has let it be known that one day in the future Bush and Blair might be seen in the same light as Roosevelt and Churchill. A good example of the rule that when it comes to talking nonsense it’s hard to beat a historian.

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Open Letter To Stephen Colbert On His Shows From Iraq

Stephen Colbert was recently on a USO tour of Iraq to entertain the illegal occupiers of the country.  The show however went far beyond entertainment, and verged on pro-war propaganda.  Among other things it included interviews with Ray Odierno, the fellow whose units according to Thomas Ricks were responsible  for much of the abuses in the initial phase of the war, and with the Kurdish boot-licker they have installed as Iraq’s deputy prime minister, a truly execrable creature. Surprisingly, no one has spoken out against this supposed enlightened ‘liberal’ whitewashing Bush’s genocidal war. That is, until now. Here is Danny Schechter, the News Dissector’s open letter to Colbert.

Operation Iraqi Stephen
Operation Iraqi Stephen

Dear Stephen Strong:

Welcome home, soldier. Your week in Iraq is all over, but the war, of course, isn’t. At least your presence there reminded us that Americans troops are still there. I am sure your presence gave them something fun to do, but hey, Nation, shouldn’t we think a little deeper about this fused exercise in military promotion and self-promotion?

Your shtick as the conservative counterpart as an O’Reilly wanna-be to Jon Stewart aside, you were not the only one flattered and enabled by the nominally apolitical USO to entertain the troops. These exercises are part of “selling” as well as “telling.”

Al Franken went on such a tour when Bush was in command although I noticed that W appears along with other former POTUS’s to endorse your cheerleading for our “service members.”

What are they really serving?

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