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| Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq | Hardcoverby Tariq Ali (Author)
| List Price: | $20.00 | | Price: | $16.00 | | You Save: | $4.00 (20%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Verso | | Page Count: | 216 Pages | | Publication Date: | November 17, 2003 | | Sales Rank: | 252,176nd |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In November 2003, Verso will publish a devastating critique of America's military occupation of Iraq, by one of the leaders of the global antiwar movement, Tariq Ali. Eschewing the liberal option of hand-wringing and the fashionable lurch to the right by some former leftists, Bush in Babylon will stand apart from the morass of sycophantic books now being presented as serious analysis by mainstream publishers. Detailing the longstanding imperial ambitions of key figures in the Bush administration and how war profiteers close to Bush are cashing in, Bush in Babylon is unique in moving beyond the corporate looting by the US military government to offer the reader an expert and in-depth analysis of the extent of resistance to the US occupation in Iraq. The sum is a characteristically revealing blend of politics, history, and culture proposing that the US war on Iraq marks a historical shift in imperial occupation and resistance that will mark the whole of the twenty-first century. On 15 February, eight million people marched on the streets of five continents against a war that had not yet begun. A historically unprecedented number of people rejected official justifications for war that the secular Ba'ath Party of Iraq was connected to al-Qaeda or that "weapons of mass destruction" existed in the region, outside of Israel. More people than ever are convinced that the greatest threat to peace comes from the center of the American empire and its satrapies, with Blair and Sharon as lieutenants to the Commander-in-Chief. Examining how countries from Japan to France eventually rushed to support US aims, as well as the futile UN resistance, Tariq Ali proposes a re-founding of Mark Twain's mammoth American Anti-Imperialist League (which included William James, W.E.B. DuBois, William Dean Howells, and John Dewey) to carry forward the antiwar movement. Meanwhile, as Iraqis show unexpected hostility and independence, rather than gratitude, for "liberation," Ali is unique is uncovering the depth of the resistance now occurring inside occupied Iraq. |
Amazon.com Review
Tariq Ali is a novelist, essayist, and BBC commentator who was among the best-known radical student leaders in late 1960s Britain. One of the ways he distinguishes himself from his anti-war contemporaries is via prodigious and multidisciplinary cultural knowledge; he once collaborated with avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman on a film about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance. Bush in Babylon benefits greatly from such knowledge. The book is essentially a harsh critique of the way the Bush administration has dealt with Iraq in the wake of 9-11, referred to as "corporate looting." The most captivating chapter centers on the history of Iraqi resistance as exemplified in poetry made by Iraqis in exile. Ali translates important contemporary works by poets who left during Hussein's regime but are still denied entry back into Iraq by Coalition forces. These are works that have traveled from the Internet to the oral tradition, to become instant spoken-word hits, and they provide a fascinating glimpse into the Iraqi situation that one cannot simply find in a daily newspaper in the West or on CNN. Ali's biggest fault is an undisguised disgust for the "imperialist" United States government. When he lists the casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki alongside those in Vietnam with no discussion of the difference between the two events, he alienates many potential fans of his important work. Bush in Babylon has a lot going for it, despite a polemical tone which invariably grates as one marches through this smart, well-researched book. --Mike McGonigal |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 23 reviews)
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Not as bad as it looks by F. Mullen (Boston, MA)  2 Stars
February 10, 2010
There's a quaintness to the anti-Bush-in-Iraq genre these days, which is why I plucked this book from the give-away shelf at the local library. I'll add it to Suskind's "One Percent Doctrine," Ricks' "Fiasco," and others of the kind in my own library on Iraq.
Tariq Ali's "Bush in Babylon" differs from the domestic political projects mentioned above in that it takes an international approach to opposing the 2003 invasion. That should be capitalized--"International," as in "Socialist International." But more on that in a bit.
Don't judge a book by its cover, is the old saw, and here's a case in point. The cover of "Bush in Babylon" is both ridiculous and fake, and it invites the passer-by to continue passing by. Here is a soldier of some kind with a US flag photo-retouched onto his helmet. He is crouched on a stair with his rifle raised at the ready. The uniform is not a US uniform. The rifle is not a US rifle. The equipment vest is also non-US. He is not a US soldier, but apparently that is unimportant to "Niels Hooper and Rachel Guidera," two New Yorkers whom the author praises for "chas[ing] after the image which finally became the cover." Some soldier, any soldier, will do, it seems, so long as he can be represented as American. Then there's the little boy above the soldier who is urinating on him from a penis that appears to be protruding from his lower intestine. A birth defect, no doubt, caused by depleted uranium ammunition left over from 1991.
But the book is not as bad as a glance at the cartoonish cover suggests. There is, despite the title, very little Bush bashing until near the end, and even that is not as vicious as much of the domestic criticism. The bulk of the book, in fact, is Iraqi and Arab history. Mind you, it is not history as written by historians. Rather, it is history as written by ideologues. It is emotional history, resentful history, vengeful history. In his recounting of the struggle for political power in post-WWII Iraq, Ali seems to regret the victory of the Ba'athist party over the ICP, the Iraqi Communist Party. The ICP, undermined by its foreign sponsors in Moscow and outmaneuvered by imperialist (British and US)-sponsored Ba'athists at home, was decimated. Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the imperialist powers found their proxies in Iraq not sufficiently malleable, and this is what the 2003 invasion was about: it was, says Ali, "essentially a war to assert imperial hegemony."
The value of this narrative is in discovering how durable are the theories of Marx among the politically dispossessed, including exiles like Ali. Britain was once a territorial empire, and America is a commercial empire; empires seek to exploit weaker peoples, hence the invasion of Iraq. That is the narrative. Nowhere does Ali acknowledge that the world might have changed since the publication of Das Kapital in the 1860's, that imperialism itself might have suffered a body blow in the 1940's or have collapsed altogether in the 1960's. The Marxist view seems to be that relations between states and economic classes have not changed since Athens raped Milos twenty-four centuries ago: "The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must."
Ali does not acknowledge that the US and Britain might have had strategic objectives in Iraq other than establishing imperialist hegemony. Neither does he acknowledge that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 might have brought about a change in American thinking about overseas threats. (When he mentions terrorism at all, it is in praise of it as a tactic against imperialism. See his reprint of Nizar Qabbani's poem, "I Am With Terrorism," pp 7-13.) He discounts the argument about WMD in Iraq by citing comments made in 2000 by "Condoleezza Rice herself" (an apparent attempt to show that even Bush insiders didn't take Iraqi WMD seriously): "If [the Iraqis] do acquire WMD," he quotes Rice, " their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration." That might have been true if Saddam had tried to use supposed WMD himself. But what 9/11 showed Americans was that terrorist networks represented a novel "delivery vehicle" for WMD, one that could obscure the true source of the weapon. This was the crux of the congressional authorization for the use of force against Iraq in 2002: the "nexus" of WMD and terrorism represented by Saddam's Iraq. Ali might have countered the logic of this notion, but he chose to ignore it instead, preferring to fall back on hackneyed imperialist interpretations of US and British actions.
Ali can be forgiven in part because he was writing in 2003. The invasion was new then, uncertainty was high, the outcome of the rising insurgency was unknown, and the path to Iraqi sovereignty was yet unclear. His anxiety over Iraq was shared by millions. But I doubt that subsequent events in Iraq would change his view significantly: as I've argued above, Ali appears to be mesmerized by an ideological interpretation of events impermeable to the developments of history. I would like to be proven wrong, and so I'll wait a bit longer for his 2nd edition.
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History Repeats Itself by Giant Panda (Washington, DC)  5 Stars
October 19, 2008
If there is any truth to the adage "history repeats itself", its in the modern history of the Iraq. One of the most brilliant living writers, Tariq Ali, takes us on a tour de force study of the history of that war-torn country, from the first British invasion during World War I, to the latest Anglo-American occupation. Ali's piercing intellect dissects Iraq's history in an attempt to understand why things have happened the way they are, providing a critical understanding not only of Western imperial policies but also of the causes for Arab weakness. Written in June 2003, only 3 months after the invasion, this book demonstrates considerable prescience about the outcome of events in Iraq, predicting an intensification of the resistance and a Shi'a uprising, among other things. Those in the West who are tired of contradictions in the official justifications for the war will do well to pick up a copy of this book and learn more about how this 'liberation' of Iraq is really no different from the first British occupation at the turn of the 20th century, down to the very rhetoric used in the West to gain support for the war.
Apart from the remarkable wealth of accurate information, this book enjoys a style of writing that is unsurpassed in modern historical writing. Once into the book, I could not resist the urge to continue, laying the book down only reluctantly at the end of two sleepless nights spent enjoying it. Excellent reading!
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A jewel of a book by Mark W. Anderson (Duluth, MN USA) 5 Stars
September 23, 2007
I've read several books by Tariq Ali. I've read this one through several times. Ali is one of my favorite authors because of his perspective. None of the assumptions of US/Western cultural or political supremacy which permeate most histories written by Western intellectuals of either Left or Right are present in his writing. After reading this book I was left with the impression that if the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz junta had had any understanding of the history of Iraq the never would have invaded.
Either the neo-conservative junta is incredibly uninformed and willfully ignorant or the Empire is in such dire shape that this risky, murderous enterprise was somehow deemed neccesary. I suspect it is a little of both.
As is detailed in this book, the resistance to occupation and colonization has a long history in Iraq.
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Tariq Ali is a fantastic writer by Bob Berkowitz (Miami, Fl) 5 Stars
April 04, 2005
"Bush in Babylon - The Recolonisation of Iraq" is indeed, as the Rome Manifesto called it, "A Precious Jewel of a book"
When searching for this book, I wanted a point of view that was not only critical of US foreign policy but critical from a non-Western point of view. It is truly eye-opening, agree with him or not, to read from an author who is not completely and fundamentally in the belief that the Western powers are just simply "Do gooders" that every once in a while, "Make a mistake."
Tariq Ali gives us a history of Iraq that destorys streotypes and our own (our meaning most Americans, myself included) ignorance on the rich history of this region of the world. It was not, as streotype would have you believe, a land of passive citizens living more or less happily under totalitarian rule. The reality of course, is something quite different. Ali gives us a history of rebellion, martyrs, and revolutionaries that nearly overthrew the corrupt, semi-colonial regime if not for a fatal error in allying with the secular Baaths.
Ali also, in a style both stylish and poetic, as well as powerfully dissident, completely disposes of the "jackals" and their arguments for war in Iraq. This war was about oil, control of natural resources BUT also, about imperial hegemony and asserting US control of a strategically crucial region of the world. And as for this "concern of human rights", the US government cares as much about human rights in Iraq as it did in the 80s and in Saudi Arabia today. (Just curious, but for the neo-cons and reactionaries, what's the excuse now for supporting this brutal dictatorship in Saudi Arabia? In Iraq, the excuse was "It's a Cold War man! Lesser of two Evils! Blah Blah Blah"...OK, so what's the excuse now? No Cold War, No Soviet Union, yet we still back this regime to the tilt. What are the apologists saying this time I wonder.)
Tariq Ali has written a very important, extremely well-written and most valuable book that not only gives us an important history of Iraq and the Middle East that we ought not forget, but also a highly critical (and highly entertaining) critique of US foreign policy. Ali's passion for humanity is moving and his contempt for fundamentalisms; both in the Middle East and in the West, is equally as essential. Well worth your time.
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Good Man - Great Thought- Value-for-Money Reading by Ajay Auti (Dubai, UAE) 5 Stars
February 17, 2005
Kudos to Tariq Ali. He is excellent in his thought and gives us a great deal of insight into the sinister plans of the neo-cons who are ruling the White-house. How they have taken on the European leaders into their fold, how they have fooled the Western Junta, the common man.
Highly recommended reading. Good, fresh outlook. Away from the daily drum-beating of US media.
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