International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2015

The US-led invasion of Iraq, a ‘supreme war crime’, not only shattered the Iraqi state, killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and devastated the incomparable cultural heritage of the birthplace of civilization, it also created the fertile seedbed for the efflorescence of crime, corruption and violent extremisms. Iraqis today live amidst shards of glass, resulting from the deliberate policy of ‘breaking windows’ to end the Iraqi state.

This article explores the relationship between the language of the State and its influence, either seen or unseen, on the language of the writer. The article builds on the claims made by authors such as Edward Said and Albert Jay Nock who posited that the State, in effect, monopolizes cultural and educational institutions, as well as digital mediums, to such an extent that the poet/critic trained or educated inside this State system is compromised at the level of the metaphor, and in the writer’s ability to pursue disinterestedly any real and meaningful criticism of the State. In support of this thesis, the article analyses several historical and contemporary entanglements between Iraq and the west, with an emphasis on critical literature, State demagoguery and higher education.

The era of American hegemony over the Arab state system beginning in 1990 has witnessed the exhaustion of Arab nationalism, destruction of the republican states influenced by its formalized ideological praxis, and the routine denial of universal human rights and Arab self-determination. Of parallel concern to this humanitarian calamity, the period has been marked by the growth of militarized non-state actors and the promotion of sectarian political identities. These phenomena are the result of policy choices, often exercised by outside power, or local elites aligned with outside power, that have driven radicalization and subverted inter-communal comity, thwarting the potential for political legitimacy at the national level. When alloyed together these phenomena, fastened as they are to Pax Americana, delineate a chaos marked by the absence of political leadership at all levels. This chaos confronts both the few remaining regional actors continuing to manage functional state institutions and those who possess some measure of political legitimacy and who attempt statebuilding, with a necessary focus on bringing order beyond their domains. Building social comity and economic development in the absence of political institutions will require a regional solution that invites the participation of all actors and the redress of legitimate grievances. The alternative, whereby greater militarized intervention and increased radicalization exploit sectarian logics, will result in expanded humanitarian wreckage and the potential ruin of the remaining institutions of governance

A Documentary History of Modern Iraq, Stacy E. Holden (ed.) (2012) Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 398 pp., ISBN 978-0-8130-4016-5, h/bk, $74.95

New Bab ylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq, Orit Bash kin (2012) Stanford: Stanford University Press, 328 pp., ISBN: 9780804778749, h/bk, $80.00

Redeployment, Phil Klay (2014) New York: The Penguin Press, 291 pp., ISBN: 9781594204999, h/bk, $21.56

Human Development in Iraq, 1950–1990, Bassam Yousif (2013) New York: Routledge, 211 pp., ISBN: 9780415782630, h/bk, $140.00; ISBN: 9780203631942, e-book, $140.00

Living To Some Purpose: Memoirs of a Secularist Iraqi and Arab Statesman, Adnan Pachachi (2013) London: Arabian Publishing Ltd, Index and appendices, 228 pp., ISBN: 9780957106031, h/bk, $31.34