Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book, and I think it's an excellent primer on Iraq, from Churchill's mistake at its creation to the present day. It's indipensable for putting the current conflict into perspective.

Much if not most of this book is helpful and provides a much needed historical review and provides a context for today's events. Mr. Tragert's handling of ancient history is adequate, but nothing a good ten minutes in an encyclopedia could not equal. His treatment of the Epic of Gilgamesh is mercifully short and he touches lightly upon the similarities between it and the Bible without falling into the trap of claiming this as proof that the Old Testament redactors borrowed this legendary material to include in their own cosmology.

I would have rated his book higher except for one glaring mistake which set my teeth on edge which is the reaction I get when someone scratches a chalkboard with their fingernails over and over again. On page 44 he says, "Like the Greeks who followed them, the Sumerian religions were pantheistic and their gods were anthropomorphic." Feeling like an idiot, I consulted another annoying feature of this book which are the little boxes that appear throughout the text with little "nuggets" of information. This one was "Desert Diction" and defined pantheism as, "...{The} belief in a group of gods where each represents a specific human action, or emotion, or a physical element, such as one for the sun, and one for the moon." Let me guess, a group of gods would be a pantheon (Greek pan means all; theos means god or gods), thus pantheon would mean all of the gods. I may be an idiot, but I am not in kindergarten. What this informational "nugget" has done is define polytheism (poly=many + theoi=gods) not pantheism. Pantheism means all is god; it equates god with the cosmos.

I do have to give Tragert credit in that he misdefines pantheism consistently throughout the book. But if his defintion is correct, then all of my dictionaries are wrong, not to mention most if not all of the authors who have written on the subject like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Aldous Huxley, etc...or I am really a Complete Idiot.

While this may seem to be a small thing, it is disconcerting nonetheless,and raises the possibility of other not quite so obvious errors and misdefintions that might slip by unnoticed. Despite these caveats and the annoying way it is set up, this Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iraq is worth reading and is a useful tool.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it provides a first-rate history of the country and details the rise to power of Saddam Hussein. Highly recommended!

Not updated since the latest Gulf War, (this edition went to press in 2003), this version of the "Idiot's Guide" lacks a clear analysis of the more recent Cheney/Bush intervention into Iraq. Its main benefit is as a compact review of overall Iraqi history and its more recent political history up to the second Gulf war.

The approach, repeated in other "Idiot's Guides," is a fail-proof one. It repeats the same materials three times: first in outline form, then in sketchy overview detail form, and then in full blown "flesh-out" detail. By the third round, the reader begins to think he really "gets it."

The only concern I had throughout the various -- more and more progressive iterations of Iraqi history -- is that a great deal of the "history" turns out to be the "history of various religious faiths," which is known to be a careless mixture of fact, fiction and religious mythology. At the very least, these authors should have warned us whenever the narrative was about to slip more into religious fantasy than historically based fact. Sorting this all out of course was immensely difficult and thus should not have been left as an exercise for the reader. Understandably, there were many periods when no other alternatives existed. Nevertheless, even in those cases, a warning about the "softness" of the facts would have been very helpful. This is especially important due to the fact that religions, more often than not were changing with each of the many conquering regimes.

Of special importance to me was the true nature of the Shia/Sunni split, which occurred during the 7th Century over who was to be considered the proper heir or designated religious authority to Mohammad. The Shia, which are only 10% of the Moslem religion (but a majority in both Iraq and Iran) believe that Ali, Mohammad's brother, to be Mohammad's proper heir. Sunnis, on the other hand, believe it to be, the caliph.

An important factoid packed with revealing history is that Saladin was a Kurd, hailing from Saddam Hussein's own hometown of Tikrit. It was Saladin, the reader may recall, who routed the Christians (led by Richard the Lion-Hearted) and took over Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. In addition to routing the Christians, Saladin is best known for the compassion he showed the "defeated Christians." History gives just the opposite picture when the Christians had earlier ejected the Moslems. By all accounts during the Christian rout of Moslems, one chronicler has it that "blood was knee-deep in the streets of Jerusalem," as the Christians were best known for killing everything that moved: men women, children and animals.

Iraq has a long arc of history: from the beginning of civilization to the current Gulf War. From pre-history up to about 600ce, it was the Sumarians who ruled the land and culture of Mesopotamia, the acknowledged "cradle of civilization." It was the Akkadians who seized the region from the Sumerians, and in the centuries before Christ, the Greeks and Persians invaded the region. There was considerable "back-and-forth" between them before the Persians emerged as the winner and Baghdad and the Arabs emerged around the 7th century as the predominate power. With the Arabs defeat of the Persians, Baghdad emerged as the preeminent cultural city of the region, the one we we have come to recognize today. Second in size and cultural influence only to Constantinople, the period of Arab rule of Baghdad was a flowering of culture, as the Arabs were the reigning scholars: introduced libraries and bureaucratic administration, Algebra, civil engineering, teaching hospitals, etc. Internecine conflict was to be the undoing of the brief period of flourishing of Arab culture. In 1258, the Mongol hordes swept done from the North, followed by the Turks. Until the modern era, when the Brits took over, Iraq had become a battleground between the Turks and the Persians.

After WW-I, things moved fairly rapidly with the discovery of oil, the establishment of the state of Israel, and continued conflict between Sunni and Shia. After WW-II, British callousness and continued diplomatic duplicity along with the establishment of Israel were responsible for the rise of pan-Arabism. Antagonism towards Israel has also been responsible for the shape of present antagonism and the current animosity Arabs have towards the West in the Middle East. Most Arabs perceive the U.S. to be Israel's chief benefactor and the underwriter of Israel's military might.

If you buy the authors' outline, then the story is loosely coherent. However, at the end, I had the haunting feeling that a lot was missing. Three stars.

I sure hope the second edition is a bit more objective in its prescriptions for what to do in there, because the first edition reads like a neocon's propaganda ploy for invading the place. Maybe that's why Dubya did it; he's a complete idiot and this book is all he read about the place. It is strong on the ancient history and early 20th century history, but the book turns into hagiography when it gets to Saddam Hussein and all his attempts to obtain WMD. After the Gulf war with all the inspections he was subjected to , all the surveillance, the UN checks, the economic sanctions, is it really logical to believe he'd be able to run a weapons program of the size Dubya, Condi, Dick, Wolfie, and the rest of the vulcans insisted he had? Sorry, but it just fails the laugh test, especially since it would have been so easy even at that time to verify that those aluminum tubes were not suited for centrifuges, that yellowcake had not been obtained at all let alone from Niger, that Saddam had no sympathy for or ties with Al Qaeda, and there was no meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague or anywhere else.

I read the 2002 edition from the library which was obviously before the invasion and subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein. I found this a great book for a total novice. It explains the progress of events in Iraq in very simple terms and takes time to repeat the main points of interest many times, which I found useful in such a complex topic. Just because it presents the concepts in a simple manner does not mean it is simplistic - scholars of the subject might find it basic but I think even most well educated westerners would learn a lot from this text. The most important point for me was that it was very readable. My only criticism was that there were no way near enough maps and those that were in the book were pretty badly drawn and without detail. I would have liked many more maps, especially showing location of troops during the various battles, relationship of the arab states, location of shiite/sunni strongholds, arab/persian, kurdish strongholds. Overall well worth the effort of reading.

I actually enjoyed the fact that this was written before the US invasion since it gave a great before the fact perspective on the situation and wasn't tainted by our the current sorry situation we all find ourselves in.

This book is a very comprehensive description of Iraq. Iraq shouldn't be a country and probably will never be from my current understanding. The British formed the country for their own convience and to control the Middle East so they could keep oil flowing. When they lost strength, the United States jumped in, again to keep oil flowing. The Americans have copied just about every mistake the British ever made, we just haven't pulled out yet. What a mess and I don't think anyone can get around the fact that the Kurds need a country. Very interesting book and it gave me room to understand and think!

It does a good job, of informing.however, I was disapointed that it failed, to delve, into the crusaides. An importaint, topic, for understanding, middle eastern hatred and distrust; of the west. also chapter 6 "Biblicalities"Is filled with misstatements,on biblical history.

This book contains all the essential information on Iraq. What makes it really special is that it is easy and actually enjoyable to read. I've never bought any of the Idiot's Guides before, but this one tempts me to try a few others.

I"m not sure why the book's author feels that stopping Saddam Hussein back in 2003 was anything less than a good thing. The former Iraqi leader got a million Iraqis and Iranians killed in the war between the two nations from 1980 to 1988, Saddam killed thousands of ethnic Kurds in Iraq and robbed those Kurds he didn't kill of almost any rights, caused 25% of Iraqi kids to starve (a Unicef report made in 2002 showed this), took over the nation Kuwait to pay off war debts, afer being expelled from there in the deadly Desert Storm he tried to take over again in 94, etc. What did the guy have to do before we decided he had to be taken out of power---destroy half of Japan? Tragert you should know better than almost anyone else that Saddam was worse for his own Iraqi than the coalition has ever been.