The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq

by Gwynne Dyer

Book Overview

As Iraq descends ever closer to civil war, no one doubts that George W. Bush's Iraq strategy has been an abysmal failure -- just as Gwynne Dyer argued it would be in both Ignorant Armies and Future:... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771029802
• ISBN13: 9780771029806
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Clarity regarding the Middle East (with some critical concerns)

I have admired and read Dyer in the past and I remain a fan of his insights into an increasingly foggy world. This book, which is in reality a 296 page essay covering the predominant aspects of the contemporary Middle East, blows a clear wind over a media landscape bligted by American conservatives who collectively have the vision of a bat flying in broad daylight. Dyer's clarity of vision (as opposed to the neocon press) brings the many disparate pieces of this hugely important yet hugely misunderstood area of the world into a clarity that is too often lacking in Washington much less the newsrooms of the American media centres. This vision sees through the disinformation spread by the major players: American neoconservatives and their bedmates, the Protestant fundamentalists, Iran and its trumped up threat, Israel with its Washington puppet and finally Iraq with her three major disfunctional sections, Shia, Sunni and Kurds. Perhaps the most explosive of these major sections of his book is chapter eight, "Israel's Delemma" because lifting the lid on Israel and the Israli influence that seems to have spread throughout the American political system could prove extraordinarily adversely negative to Israli efforts to maintain a positive impression of all things Israeli. There are two other primary problems that I have with Dyer's book: I do not believe that al-Qaeda exists as an international organisation as does Dyer and I do not, therefore, believe that such a non-existent organisation planned and carried out the 9-11 attacks. I know that this statement constitutes a very long bow but I have read enough, from both sides of politics, to come to this conclusion. That begs the question, therefore, why does a guy so intelligent and aware of current world events believe otherwise and my conclusion is simply that he is afraid to take the cork out of the bottle. 9-11, since it happened, has become the new worldwide sacred cow; something not to be questioned by legitimate writers becaus to commit the mortal sin (Catholic mythology here) of questioning the "truth" of 9-11 and that is to commit career suicide. I think Dyer is too smart or too rich to do that. This book is insightful, rich and I would recommend it to any reader.

A mess indeed - and a good job of explaining it

George Bush and his neo-con delusionaries set out to remake the Middle East and, by golly, it was going to be easy with predictions of a cakewalk and people littering the streets with rose petals to honor the conquerors of the new American Empire. They have remade the Middle East, but the rose petals are missing -- along with thousands of young American lives and countless Iraqi civilians who continue to die in the horror of a civil war unleased by a rash, immature president who has always managed to escape any consequences for his behavior. The son who described himself as the"family black sheep to Queen Elizabeth during his father's administration - has fully lived up to it. But the GOP was going to install the grownups. Instead we've got a wrecked economy that is heavily war dependent, deficit spending greater than WWII, fat defense contractors ladled with corruption and a nation that is more unhappy than ever with where it is going. But it is the Iraq war that overshadows everything. It was the means for bullied election winning, based on fear. Support the Troops came to mean Support My War and to hell with the troops, who continue to pay the price for idiocy at the top. Iraqis thought for some time before this book was published that they were better off under the brutal rule of Saddam than the brutal mess made by a group of incompetent ideologues, the best and brightest conservatives the GOP could find. Iraqis who can afford it and many of those who can't are fleeing Iraq for safer havens. There is still the irrational calls for victory in a war that lost its purpose before it started. No WMDS or any of the other fictional intelligence fed us to allow Bush Junior to pretend he had grown up to be a man. Even now, he runs away from what he has inflicted on us. To be sure, Mr. Dyer, is to some degree rendering a polemic verdict on the Mess of Potamia, but it is an informed one by someone who has written extensively on war and of the Middle East. What we're failing to understand is what Dyer is talking about. This is not simply a losing war, But a war that is consuming the innards of the World's only Superpower, if indeed, that appellation still applies. We are far more ordinary to the world as a whole, much more vulnerable than ever. Our weaknesses are exposed. And if we could still defeat any conventional military, that is not our choice in a war where we do not even know the enemy. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the war and even now, the faction that claims the name is more of a local insurgency than a bin Laden affiliation. It plays a relatively minor role despite yet more Bushian attempts to rationalize his foolish war that had only a beginning and no end in sight. The Democrats have lost their spines and cannot find it in themselves to stop the disaster from getting worse. In the meanwhile, what is left of the GOP subverts free speech, espouses foreign and domestic surveillance of American citizens without cause and continu