books

So I just returned from Italy - pictures to come, but at the moment I'm pleased to say that I finally finished Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization and then, as an added bonus, managed to read all of Standard Operating Procedure on the flight back home. Who knew it would be so hard to put down?

The good parts of The Great War for Civilization so far outweigh the bad parts that I can still recommend it wholeheartedly. It feels a little slapdash at times, and the quality is not consistent, but I've come out of it with a much better, much more thorough understanding of a number of conflicts that are often mentioned and rarely explained: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, the war in Algeria, the Armenian genocide, and the first war in Iraq - Desert Storm. All of these really add up to a much better understanding of what's going on in Iraq right now.

For example, here is some information I would have liked to see explained clearly and briefly before:

• Iraq is a majority Shi'i state.
• Iran is a Shi'i state.
• Saddam Hussein belonged to Iraq's Sunni minority.
• Saddam Hussein was a relatively secular dictator, but he heavily favored the minority Sunni population and violently repressed the Shi'i majority.
• The United States supported Saddam Hussein because his oppression of Iraq's Shi'i majority helped contain Iran. The enemy of our enemy was our friend - and Saddam Hussain was an enemy to Iran.
• Now we want democratic elections in Iraq.
• The Shi'i majority never had a chance to develop home-grown political parties and leadership
• Shi'i political parties and leadership in Iraq were developed in Iran.
• Iran has shown great willingness to extend its influence through the support of Shi'i political parties abroad - see: Lebanon.
  
• The United States still hates Iran.
• Conclusion: the US is going to have a hard time accepting democracy in Iraq.

When you really piece it all together, the cause and effect is so clear. And the more information you have, the clearer it becomes.

Maybe I could have read a handful of different books to get all the same information - but it was nice to have one big book as a starting point. And maybe I could have read something that was a little more measured or restrained in tone - but The Great War for Civilization is actually an enjoyable read, and in a book that is so long and so depressing that counts for a lot.

Standard Operating Procedure was in many ways a corrective to The Great War for Civilization. Every word was carefully chosen and the authors, Gourevitch and Morris, work hard to be dispassionate, even-handed, and give the soldiers of Abu Ghraib the chance to tell their own story without interference. At first I wished for a bit more context - I wanted to hear more about the whole conflict, and not just the prison - but by the end I was grateful that the book is so focused. It's not about the Middle East - it's about the United States - and the context is correctly a military one.

I think it would be a shame to spoil the book - and I also think it would be incredibly difficult. It has to be read to be believed. All I will say is that having read Standard Operating Procedure, I will never think about Abu Ghraib in the same way again.

more politics, apparently

When I read this article, "Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control," about the US trying to cinch a deal to set up 50 permanent bases in Iraq and ensure that American troops would remain immune from Iraqi law, I wasn't surprised. Same 'ol, same 'ol.

Then I read this article, "US issues threat to Iraq's $50 billion foreign reserves in military deal" and I have to say...I was surprised. Not just that we're using incredibly unfair ultimatums to force Iraq to accept the agreement described in the first article; that's pretty low. I almost thought it was worse that the US Treasury vetoed an Iraqi attempt to switch their assets from dollars to euros, "because it would show lack of confidence in the dollar." Proper stewards don't squander the resources they have commited to protect, and certainly not from such pure self-interest.

The Independent is my new favorite paper.

Newsflash

Philip Gourevitch's new book about Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, is finally out in stores. His last book, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, is one of my favorite books of all time - not just as a work of journalism but as an investigation into the nature of evil.

I'm copying and pasting Amazon's description of the book, and their mini-blurb about the authors:

Standard Operating Procedure is a war story that takes its place among the classics. It is the story of American soldiers who were sent to Iraq as liberators only to find themselves working as jailers in Saddam Hussein’s old dungeons, responsible for implementing the sort of policy they were supposed to be fighting against. It is the story of a defining moment in the war, and a defining moment in our understanding of ourselves—the story of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse, as seen through the eyes, and told through the voices, of the soldiers who took them and appeared in them. It is the story of how those soldiers were at once the instruments of a great injustice and the victims of a great injustice.

In a tradition of moral and political reckoning, and all-powerful story-telling, that runs from Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor to Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising and perceptive account of the front lines of the war on terror. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris’s startlingly frank and intimate interviews with the soldier-photographers who gave us what have become the iconic images of the Iraq war, Standard Operating Procedure is a book that makes you see, and makes you feel, and above all makes you think about what it means to be human. It is an utterly original book that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines—a work of searing power from two of our finest masters of nonfiction, working at the peak of their powers.

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Philip Gourevitch is the award-winning author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda and A Cold Case. He is the editor of The Paris Review and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker.

Errol Morris is a world-renowned filmmaker-the Academy Award-winning director of The Fog of War and the recipient of a MacArthur genius award. His other films include Mr. Death, Fast Cheap & Out of Control, A Brief History of Time, and The Thin Blue Line.

I'm still only halfway through The Great War for Civilization, but I may have to set it aside for a while. This is going to be the book of the summer, if not the year.

Read This Book: Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East

I'm only about a quarter of the way through it, but I can't wait until I finish to sing the praises of this truly excellent modern history. I adored Fisk's first book, Pity the Nation - the best history we have of the civil war in Lebanon, by a reporter who speaks fluent Arabic and has lived in Beirut for the past thirty years or so. It helped me understand the political situation in the Near East - which is quite an accomplishment, given how complicated the situation is.

The Great War for Civilization is a much more ambitious project. It attempts to cover all the important things that have happened in the Middle East over the past thirty years or so - it's less heartfelt, since Fisk is no longer writing about his backyard, but more enlightening. Ever wondered what happened in that way-back war in Afghanistan when Bin Laden and the US were over there fighting the Russians? Or what the Iranian revolution was all about, and what part the US played in it? Or why Iran and Iraq were at war, and why the US was best buds with Saddam Hussein one minute and out for blood the next? Well, all these questions and more are answered. And, I repeat: I'm only one quarter of the way through it!

Amazingly enough, not only is this book enlightening, it's hard to put down. It's compelling, it's fun to read, it pulls you in. And I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who has even the faintest interest in what's going on in the Middle East.