Why we are where we are: Gwynne Dyer's Ignorant Armies: Sliding into war in Iraq
Written: Apr 05 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Incredibly current, prophetic, well-reasoned and argued.
Cons: Might be dismissed as just more foreign sniping at the US.
The Bottom Line: It's a realistic view of the causes and outcomes of the current conflict in Iraq.
|
|
|
| pageclot's Full Review: Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq Books |
I find myself quite conflicted by the Iraqi conflict and invasion (the Gulf War, part 2). On the one hand, I believe that Saddam Hussein is a guy that the world would be better off without. On the other hand, I don't believe that the men and women of the US military should be used as the world's policemen. There had better be a really good reason to invade someone before you risk the lives of your own countrymen. That reason, or reasons should be easily defended and explained to the families of those who lose their lives in the conflict.
In 1989, I watched the World Debating Championships final, between a team from Australia and an American team from Yale University. The topic was the Olympics, and whether or not professional athletes should be allowed to participate. The debate was a watershed for me. Each of the speakers was so persuasive that I found my own convictions on the issue shifting back and forth. For the record, the Yale team won by arguing that professionals should be allowed to compete. But since then, I've always been a little reluctant about trusting my initial knee-jerk reactions. I realized that I could be swayed by a cleverly constructed and consistent argument. I think it's because, possessed of by-comparison-muddy-thinking, I'm drawn to clarity.
And that is why Gwynne Dyer's Ignorant Armies is so appealing to me. Ignorant Armies was written in January of 2003 (in a 3 week period), and my wife picked it up for me shortly after the invasion of Iraq started. It is a model of clarity, and persuasiveness.
Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian, and has been a respected writer on international affairs for probably 30 years or more, and in Ignorant Armies, he covers a lot of ground that must be familiar to him. I heard him on a CBC radio interview a few weeks ago, and his voice, like his writing, sparkles with an almost gleeful bluntness. He tells it like he sees it, and radiates a certain brusque intelligence. Ignorant Armies, written in such a short period of time, is not meant to be a definitive, footnoted reference work of our time, but it seethes with immediacy and relevance nonetheless. Dyer examines the roots of the current conflict, referring to the September 11th, 2001 and previous attacks against Americans worldwide, and how those attacks led to American crushing of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to the logical hoops jumped through to justify the current attack on Iraq.
One of the best, and most convincing sections of Dyer's work is that dealing with why America was attacked on September 11th. The rationale (according to Dyer) went like this:
Osama bin Laden wanted to unite the Arab world in revolt against the regimes in power (in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, etc) and put these countries under the control of Islamic theocracies. After attacking the embassy in Kenya, and watching the violent Arab reactions to Clinton's almost indiscriminate bombings in the Middle East as a reaction, bin Laden figured that a really big offence against the US would elicit a response 10 times as large, leading to the uprising of Arabs against governments in the Middle East that supported the US in the first Gulf War. Dyer makes the case that bin Laden could not attack the Middle East countries by himself, and couldn't cause uprisings amongst the people himself, so he needed an overreaction by the world's largest superpower to help everything along.
The problem with the plan (Dyer argues) was that al-Qaeda didn't read George W. Bush and his advisors right. For many possible reasons, (the one I liked best was that the new administration wanted to do nothing like the previous Clinton administration), Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Bush didn't fall into the trap of the immediate shotgun retaliation. In admiring tones, Dyer reviews the US executives' restraint in striking back, in getting UN backing for the attack on the Taliban, and in gathering together a coalition of countries willing to join them.
All of this care in making sure the US was hitting the right target is contrasted with the generally flimsy case for invading Iraq. Dyer examines each of the arguments for invading Iraq (Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Iraq won't co-operate with the UN weapons inspectors, Iraq is ruled by a terroristic regime that has, among other things, gassed its own people, Iraq's leaders have links with al-Qaeda) and subjects each of them to a reasonable scrutiny, under which they wither.
Dyer takes some pains to explain the potential for the bad things that could arise from the current conflict. The potential further destabilization of the Middle East, the possibility that Israel might use this current conflict to resettle the Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into Jordan, the possibility of a massive influx of refugees into Jordan toppling that government, the potential for brutal repression of uprisings in other Middle East countries.
It all makes for interesting reading, tempered by the bitter reality that the likelihood of a peaceful resolution arising from the invasion of Iraq is a lot less than the likelihood of more decades of repression, misery and instability for the bulk of the Middle East peoples.
Given my yearning for clarity and previous admission that I am easily swayed by persuasive arguments, I'm reluctant to point at Dyer's book and proclaim it the final word on the invasion of Iraq. In the end, it may just offer comfort to those that already opposed the invasion of Iraq, and not convince those that think it's the right thing to do.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.