Thinking About Iraq: Reflections on the 10th Anniversary of the Second Gulf War

[saithkar]

This article originally appeared in issue 3 of The Young Pioneer, an online magazine in 2013. Republished here as this issue has now been archived.In Ian McEwan’s masterful novel “Saturday” (unquestionably the first great novel about the War on Terror), the main character, Henry Perowne, spends most of that titular day thinking about Iraq. Taking

Comments

[ironlord]

It could so easily have been titled "There Is No Victory". For the US, for the western world, for Iraq, for the Iraqi people, for the Middle East...

And likely as not, we could all live to an extreme old age and sit in front of the hologrammatic 3DTV (or, given that this is 2070-something, have the pictures broadcast directly into our frontal lobes) in a creaking rocking chair with our legs covered in a high-tech blanket made from a material that hasn't yet been invented but is warmer than wool and stronger than Kevlar, and we will say "bloody hell, are they still at it?"

[saithkar]

In the Middle East there is never any victory, just lulls between periods of carnage, has been that way since pre-Biblical times. As the old joke goes "LATEST NEWS FROM MIDDLE EAST: PLOWSHARES HASTILY RE-BEATEN INTO SWORDS".

[ironlord]

The difference between pre-Biblical times and now - or even between 150 years ago and now - is a plentiful supply of AK-47s and ammo. And an AK-47 is designed to work in the desert, in a pool of mud, in the Arctic, on Venus...

[saithkar]

Oh I know, M16's aint got shit on the AK, but let's face it, the Middle East doesn't need durable weaponry to fight, they were doing it with sticks at the dawn of time.