Words Shall Set You Free

“Why are otherwise intelligent people in Britain and the United States surprised on learning that the occupation is detested by a majority of Iraqi citizens? Empires sometimes forget who they are crusading against and why, but the occupied rarely suffer from such confusions. How could they when the regime being imposed upon them is a mixture of Gaza and Guantanamo?“ –Tariq Ali

In his book length essay, Bush In Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali merges the formidable power of poetry with the innate poignancy of historical fact, and delves into the history of occupied Iraq within the last century. From the British attempts to ’nation build’ in a country steadfast in its resistance to colonial rule, to the current American endeavours to resume where the British left off, Ali is no–holds barred in his approach to recounting the grim actuality of Iraq’s struggle for self–government. Brutal candour is framed by provocative prose in Ali’s argument that the American failure to learn from history will destine both the conqueror and the conquered to a repetitive sequence of mindless violence and ruin. Aside from the Bush Administration’s curious ability to shape the rationales behind the present war, discounting the peculiar phenomena of invisible weapons of mass destruction, and even setting apart the laughable absurdity of the American troops as liberators, there remains a more sinister facet to this tangled web of lies.

With the furtive insinuation of an association between those Iraqis resisting the occupation of their native land and the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration has passed the point of trying to cover the public’s eyes; it’s now attempting a full scale eye–gouging operation. One can even consider it the Bushian fait accompli, so to speak, the masking of an imperialist agenda behind the pretext of fighting terrorism. Indeed, it is a point worth pondering. At what instant in time, when assailed by so much garbage from the hubristic sewer that is the American media, did we begin to regard the terms ’terrorist’ and ’insurgent’ as synonyms?

Ali reasons that the real cause behind the war cannot be boiled down to a single factor. Rather, a number of aspects ensured its certainty: Israeli security concerns, Iraqi oil reserves, and a need for an increased U.S. military presence in the region, all contributed significantly towards the final decision to invade Iraq. His scholarly analysis is unblinking as it reveals the hegemonic ambitions that made the war in Iraq inevitable. Aims that were mapped out as early as 1997 by Bush’s Neo–conservative advisors were made easier to realize by the catastrophic 9/11 attacks.

Interestingly, as the modus operandi of invasion scarcely changes, the attitudes of the invaders do not show remarkable evolution either, at least in their expression. Almost eighty years ago, Winston Churchill referred to an Iraq balking at foreign occupation as ’that ungrateful volcano’, refreshingly honest when one considers the present occupiers’ self–righteous party line drenched in denial. In surmising the situation in Iraq, Ali is just as frank in his view that the Americans will not succeed where the British had failed. The proverbial ’natives’, in fact, will simply not be pacified.

’Bush In Babylon’ is a thoroughly researched study of the war in Iraq, deftly tying the present situation to its broader historical implications. The immense loss of life as a result of imperial intrusion is recounted with agonizing clarity, even as the wounds that Iraq has inflicted upon itself are not spared. The details of the disastrous foreign impact upon Iraq are particularly difficult to digest: the use of chemical weapons by the British at their peak to quash Iraqi resistance, America’s duplicitous support for Saddam Hussein as he slaughtered Kurds and Communists alike, and the West’s role as an opportunistic arms dealer for both Iran and Iraq in their bloodthirsty war of the eighties.

This lack of understanding, of the people they have subjugated and of the land they have scarred, will ultimately contribute to the failure of the American intrusion. And as much as the television tries to imply that Iraqis are scarcely a step up from uncivilized savages in loincloths, and that Iraq itself is nothing more a festering boil in need of incessant cauterization, it is the beauty of the written word that serves to express the dignity and culture of the oppressed. Ali realizes this in his masterful inclusion of the Arab poetry written by the exiled intellectuals and artists of Iraq, as seen by the opening lines of a poem by Al–Jawahiri:

I see a horizon lit with blood,
And many a starless night.
A generation comes and another goes
And the fire keeps burning.

This is poetry that is passionate and resonant and powerful. Uncompromising and unapologetic in its honesty, it is shaded with the colours of death and of violence, of blood and of smoke. And yet, the strains of a melodic tragedy lay entwined in the lines of Al–Jawahiri, an awareness of the fullness of human suffering and desperation. These opening lines of his poem, for all of their terrible beauty and presaging gloom, are not merely the literary artifices of a poet. They are glimpses behind the flimsy veil that divides the dehumanizing fiction of the conquerors from the universality of human anguish, the true reality of the conquered.

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