.. you can start reading the story of Iraq from
around 1890 if you want- the Ottoman/Persian wars in
which a third of the iraqi population perished, see
Lotsky, the history of modern arab states. under
british control, from 1919 until 1958, Iraq ranked
extremely low in terms of development and income
distribution, the genie coefficient was probably the
highest in the world. In the seventies you've had
turkey and Iran both American anti-soviet satelites of
the first order closing in on iraq; but you also had
huge human developments in iraq, literacy, women- a
crucial issue for the development of the arab world,
and better income distribution. at the same time as
well, you had internal strife principally a civil war
sponsored by America via the shah in the north.
afterwards came the Algiers treaty of 1975, which
principally meant capitulation for Iraq- it lost the
war in the north. THERE SHOULD BE A MORE CAREFUL
READING OF HISTORY ESPECIALLY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. one
cannot say the seventies and eighties like that. in
any case, the typical colonial design which allowed
the USA to replace Britain in the gulf failed in Iraq.
take it from here. no one said the middle east is
easy.
--- Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> G'day all,
>
> I reckon the UK has really poisoned what was left of
> their relationship with
> the continent (as Tony Hancock once said, 'the wogs
> start at Calais'), and I
> reckon Unca Sam's failure to exercise the simple
> good manners of telling its
> mates that it was about to crank up the intensity in
> the Middle East continues
> to evince what looks like a level of plumb-stoopid
> arrogance that's only going
> to feed anti-Washington sentiment throughout the
> world.
>
> And as for Saddam, well, the west made him quite
> deliberately in the seventies
> and eighties - are they being equally deliberate in
> their consolidation of his
> symbolic power throughout the region now?
> Physically, the west is plainly
> just killing Arabs. Politically, it's creating The
> Arab Stalwart. In terms
> of its own professed ends, the west is clearly
> failing (what are the
> no-flyover zones for nowadays? How has peace,
> democracy and The Amurken Way
> been advanced in the region? How have hearts and
> minds been won?). And Unca
> Sam's battered status as honest broker in the
> Israel/Palestine mess surely has
> nothing left to it at all.
>
> I mean, given that the Pentagon and Langley crowds
> aren't stupid (am I giving
> too much here?), should we be looking for an
> economic or strategic subtext?
> Is a volatile middle east worth something to
> Washington? Is it to keep the
> likes of the Kuwaitis and Saudis nervously dependent
> on the US
> military-industrial complex and Washington's good
> will? Is it to produce a
> sufficiently substantial antagonistic bloc (eg
> Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq)
> to keep domestic support for defence expenditure up
> to scratch? Is it to
> ensure Europe and oil-procucers don't become too
> friendly?
>
> If so, they're paying a hell of a price (never mind
> the price others are
> paying) for it. In the post-Cold War era, Sam can't
> rely on his old allies
> without paying them some occasional respect, yet
> he's intent on insulting them
> and making life difficult for them. Continental
> Europe sounds livid. And
> Middle-Eastern friends like Egypt, Turkey and Jordan
> must be finding it
> particularly difficult to reconcile their ties to
> Washington with domestic
> sentiment.
>
> I know it's only one of thousands of sortees, but am
> I the only one to get the
> impression that Washington is either totally unaware
> or uncaring about foreign
> relations or deliberately breeding inter-bloc
> belligerence? Weird ...
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.
>
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