2008 will be the 50th anniversary of iraq’s revolution, which ended the british hashemite monarchy. if we are to believe david brooks and how he frames iraq’s violent past, then maybe this will be a big moment. undoubtedly it will be commemorated, though how who knows. of course mr. brooks history of iraq, provided in an op-ed 11/00, was a polemic, a quick look at an essay based on british documents and the following summary:
"And his is a Gibbonesque tale of horror. There is the endless Shiite-Sunni fighting. There is a massacre of the Assyrians, which is celebrated rapturously in downtown Baghdad. Children are gunned down from airplanes. Tribal wars flare and families are destroyed. A Sunni writer insults the Shiites and the subsequent rioters murder students and policemen. A former prime minister is found on the street by a mob, killed, and his body is reduced to pulp as cars run him over in joyous retribution."
while dismissing a base, unspecified view of iraq as historically violent, the reasons for bringing up history are still there. americans were the first foreign invaders and occupiers of iraq since the british; perhaps george h w bush didn’t order tanks all the way to baghdad because he didn’t want that weight on the us. perhaps george bush sr had a head for history. i could be wrong, but even if that thought crossed his mind only for a moment, that’s more than we can expect from his son. the baseless rhetoric and public talk that america rode into iraq and that continues to propel the war expects little from americans.
americans need not know a history of the modern middle east, shaped by imperialism, zionism, and increasingly since the end of the second world war, american foreign policy. the settlement program begun by israel after the june war in 1967, and supported continuously by every American president since, is only part of the picture on the ground. in the 1980s, america supported Israel’s invasion of lebanon; through the 1990s and into 2000, a perhaps hopeful peace process failed in israel/palestine, not simply because arafat rejected barak’s "generous offer" but because of the flaws of that ungenerous offer. newspapers might have described it generous, but a look at the definitive maps — which no papers provided at the time — revealed the american support for israel confining palestinians to three cantons in the west bank, dissected by israeli roads and settlement blocs. palestine would have been the gaza strip and a broken west bank, behind a expanding, meandering wall, the ‘67 borders constantly being redrawn by settlements.
immediate military aid for israel throughout the second intifida, when the ratio of palestinian and israeli death was near 10 to 1, and the bush administration’s support of increased israeli aggression and settlement expansion under sharon did not disappear as factors on the ground when america began its war on terror. they did not go away when america invaded iraq. when we ask why so much of the middle east is not ‘moderate’ to our liking, why iraqis — thank you mr. brooks — have a historical penchant for being violent, greedy, and against the common good — well, that is when we need to ask other questions. why the american view is so essentialist, casting ‘moderate’ against ‘rogue’ and ‘terror’ against ’security’ in such a way that precludes any real consideration of the place and the increasingly american presence in the region, whether directly in iraq or indirectly along the separation wall, in the grid of new west bank settlements, or in the empty space of a bulldozed palestinian home.
if in 2008 violence in iraq has subsided and the american-catered government can pacify the country, then perhaps the celebration of 1958 will take on a glow of actual progress. if in 2008 we are where we are today, which is fairly close, just worse, than where we were in 2005 and 2004, then 1958 will likely be remembered another way.
if the dates and details actually impress themselves on us, perhaps the totality of american history in the middle east, from the 1950s to the present, will tell us to finally scale back our involvement, to change course, to not push all the way to baghdad, and to try and actually broker even resolution in israel and palestine. maybe when we see the iraqi revolution of 1958 in 2008, we will takes the significance of the moment, which was the collapse of the british system there, and apply it preemptively on the course of american foreign policy.
