The Book:
In "Israel and the clash of civilizations Jonathan Cook argues that the prevalent view of Iraq's fate - that its civil war was a terrible and unforeseen consequence of the US invasion and a series of bad decisions made by the occupation regime - is profoundly mistaken. Rather, civil war and partition were the intended outcome of the invasion and seen as beneficial to American interests, or at least they were by a small group of ultra-hawks known as the neoconservatives who came to dominate the White House under President George W.Bush. The neoconservatives' understanding of American interests in the Middle East was little different from that of previous administrations: securing control of oil in the Persian Gulf. But what distinguished Bush's invasion of Iraq from similar US attempts at regime change was the strategy used to achieve this goal.
This distinctive new strategy for regime overthrow adopted by the White House originated far from Washington, and was apparently opposed by most of the country's senior military command and by the Sate Department under Colin Powell. In the early 1980s Israel's security establishment has developed ideas about dissolving the other states of the Middle East to encourage ethnic and religious discord. This was in essence a re-imagining of the regional power structure that had existed under the Ottomans - before the arrival of the European colonialists and their forced reordering of the Middle East into nation states - but with Israel replacing the Turks as the local imperial power. In this way, hoped Israel and the neocons, large and potentially powerful states such as Iraq and Iran could be partitioned between their rival ethnic and sectarian communities.
Comment:
Writing from within (Nazareth), Jonathan Cook has an unrivaled vantage point for his arguments. It is easy to see why he is labeled an extreme leftist by those whose actions and motives he questions in his books. For an objective and interested reader on the other hand, his books provide insights and enhances understanding.
As I write this review Iran's cleric leaders try to deal with the fallout of the contested elections. In televised "confessions" the western media is blamed for instigating the street protests going into the second week now. What is described as false accusations by the West, - looking into history it is clear that what the clerics fear had happened in Iran in 1953, - bears a deeper meaning for those looking beyond the daily headlines. No one country, politician or point of view (or journalist) can accurately convey even a small measure of objectivity on the whole spectrum of events (historical and present). We should be grateful to writers who present to us their inside knowledge the way they experience it, without demanding omniscience. Yes, we also must oppose Islamic fundamentalism, which is the symptom of the problem not the cause, but we must have the courage to confront one of the root causes nurturing Islamic fundamentalism today, - the enslavement of a whole people for generations. "Israel and the clash of civilizations focuses on Israel and its allies' motives. It is a book that will deepen an objective readers understanding of a very complex issue. What more can one ask for?
