International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2006

This article analyses the complex relationship between Islam and American imperial assertions in the Middle East. While a variety of Islamic movements and governments have historically been enlisted as friends of the American project, Islam today is most useful as the enemy of choice in the so-called global war on terror. Today, when the logic of US withdrawal from Iraq gains support daily in America, only the Islamist imaginary provides arguments still found credible by a frightened American populace to sustain the occupation. The Islamist imaginary and the diffuse fears it evokes, unconstrained by logic or realism and quite unrelated to facts on the ground, is now more essential to empire than ever before. It is only reasonable to expect that the Islam imagined by empire will be with us for some time to come.

This article describes how the interrelationship between the media and pro-Israeli, neo-conservative lobbyists helped to create a climate of opinion in the United States that enabled the Bush administration to secure acceptance for the war on Iraq. Many neo-conservatives move easily from government positions to highpaying jobs as lobbyists or as columnists or pundits in the media especially the electronic media and then back to the government. This revolving door allows a few committed neo-conservatives and Zionist sympathizers to exercise undue influence on the formation and implementation of foreign policy as in the case of the Iraq war. In the run-up to the war, the media was complacent if not complicit in accepting government distortions and lies about the causes for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even by 2006, having learned little or nothing from the failures in Iraq, the Bush administration and pro-Israeli lobbyists, with extensive support from the media, was considering further wars against Syria and Iran.

This article describes how American mass media's acquiescence to state propaganda, most glaring in the American campaign to invade Iraq, affected Canadian media coverage in the build-up to war. While the Canadian government ultimately opted-out of the American (mis)adventure in Iraq, this could not have been predicted by the press coverage of Canada's major dailies. Canadian press coverage in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq was similar, if not in degree then certainly in kind, to the coverage seen in their American equivalents. Wholly uncritical and deferential to state propaganda, the Canadian press failed to challenge the dubious claims of the Bush administration and in this failure defaulted in its responsibility to inform the public and provide alternative opinions. The transformation of the Canadian media is in large part attributable to the concentration of media ownership, and is part of an ongoing transformation of Canada's political function, from independent international actor to junior adjunct of the United States. In this presentation, some preliminary comments are made as to the relationship between media coverage of Iraq and Canadian public opinion.

US policies subsequent to its March 2003 invasion of Iraq bear a direct responsibility for the nature of the violent insurgency, the failure to establish a stable democratic government and the country's growing sectarian strife. It is unlikely that any kind of stable, peaceful, democratic Iraq could have emerged following a foreign invasion even if the subsequent occupation and transition was handled more responsibly, yet the miscalculations by Bush administration officials greatly worsened the situation. Among the most important of these was the decision to impose a neo-liberal economic strategy on the country.

The Lebanon War needs to be understood as an expression of an Israel/United States partnership designed to restructure the Middle East in a manner that serves both countries' security and strategic interests. The main goal is to rely upon political and military pressures to eliminate political actors, whether governments or popular movements, that are perceived as hostile to the hegemonic grand design of the partnership. The Lebanon War, arising from a border incident, reflected Israeli efforts to reach the goals that eluded it during an earlier offensive war against Lebanon in 1982. American support for Israel was based on the unconditional character of domestic support for Israel in the United States, specifically justified by reference to the global war on terror. Washington also enlarged the diplomatic battlefield beyond Israeli efforts to destroy Hezbollah by blaming Syria and Iran as the main sources of terrorism against Israel. From this perspective, the Lebanon War represented a renewal of Israeli/US efforts at regional restructuring, which had been floundering as a result of the American failures in Iraq, as well as the unexpected degree to which American calls for democracy, when heeded, were bringing to power Islamic leaders opposed to Israeli/US regional hegemony and sympathetic with the aspirations of the Palestinian people. The Lebanon War needs to be understood in the context of the dangerous encounter with Iran over its nuclear programme, which if not peacefully resolved, could lead to a regional war with disastrous global consequences.

This article addresses the fact that little is known about the performance of the Iraqi economy after the 1970s due to a number of reasons including great official secrecy, the impact of repeated wars and, most important of all, the system of disaggregated economic management put in place by the Bathi regime in which many important parts of the system were managed, off-budget, as discrete units. While acknowledging the great difficulties in reconstructing the overall effect of such a system, Owen suggests ways by which we might begin to understand its logic as a preliminary to the team effort needed to reconnect the economic history of the last thirty years with what went before. This, he argues, is vital not only for a proper study of Iraq's development effort but also as a benchmark against which to judge present efforts at economic reconstruction and recovery.

Fusein-Iraku Seiken no Shihai Kouzou (The Ruling Structure of Saddam Husayn's Regime), Keiko Sakai (2003) Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, xvi + 342 pp., 3.045Iraku: Sensou to Senryou (Iraq: War and Occupation), Keiko Sakai (2004) Tokyo: Iwanami Shinnsho, 244 pp., 777Iraku Sensou Deita Bukku (Data Book of the Iraq War), Masayuki Yamauchi and Motohiro Ono (eds.) (2004) Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 119 pp. text + 139 pp. tables, 2.100Gendai Islam Sekai Ron (The Islamic World: Heritage, Rebirth and Contemporary Dynamics), Yasushi Kosugi (2006) Nagoya: Nagoya University Press, xviii + 790 + 114 pp., 6.300Mudhakkirt: Al-Sir' min ajl al-Dmuqrtiyyah fi al-'Iraq, Muhammad Hadid (2006) London: Dar al-Saqi, 576 pp., ISBN: 1855167220 (pbk), GB 16.00The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia, Milbry Polk and Angela M.H. Schuster (eds.) (2005) New York: Henry N. Abrams, 242 pp. including index, ISBN: 0810958724 (hbk), US 35.00.Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq, Mark Etherington (2005) London: Hurst, 252 pp. including index, ISBN: 1-85065-773-4 (hbk), 15