The fog of war

Harry Truman is supposed to have said something like, "I pity the man who, having faithfully read the papers every day, believes he has some idea of what has passed in his time." 

This new book by Patrick Cockburn illustrates the point. PZ sends this link to a review in the June 19 London Review of Books of the new book Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n12/cock01_.htmll. 

Here’s an excerpt from The Independent, 
Sunday, 13 April 2008, reviewed by Oliver Poole:

One of the more remarkable aspects of the Iraq war is how, even now, more than five years after it started, there is still a lack of general understanding about what has actually unfolded there. To many people, the conflict is merely an incomprehensible Hobbesian mess of mindless bloodshed and violence largely devoid of internal logic.

The spin, propaganda and lies force-fed by politicians and government officials who should have behaved better has left the general public woefully ill-equipped to understand the Iraqi social forces that have shaped events in Mesopotamia.

The achievement of this book is that, by placing the events of the present Iraq war within the context of the developing history of Iraqi Shias, it illustrates how the events of recent years were in large part merely a continuation of pre-existing social and political developments. America and Britain's failure to appreciate this, Cockburn argues convincingly, is the primary cause of the catalogue of errors which has caused the war to become a "cataclysm" in Iraq's history comparable to the "Mongol invasion of 1258".

See the whole review here: www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/muqtada-alsadr-and-the-fall-of-iraq-by-patrick-cockburn-807432.html