BANKING ON BAGHDAD: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict
By Edwin Black. Wiley. 471 pp. $27.95
Edwin Black's Banking on Baghdad underlines Iraq's long
history of exploitation by Western powers and powerful corporations
struggling for advantage and domination. His impressive analysis, which
included looking at more than 50,000 original documents and hundreds of
scholarly books and articles, provides a comprehensive history of Iraq
that explains why the West's record in the region so complicates
nation-building there today. Black writes that popular sentiment in
Iraq in the post-World War II era is most aptly characterized by
"resentment over foreign interference, anti-Zionism, and churning
nationalism . . . fused into a rage against the West." Clearly, the
West's imperial legacy in Iraq has placed the United States at a major
disadvantage in the war of ideas in the Middle East. America's poor
understanding of Iraq's history only makes matters worse. "Most
Americans had never heard of Najaf," the great center of Shiite
pilgrimage, Black points out, "and barely knew the difference between
Shiites and Sunnis." In one foreboding anecdote, he describes the
British effort after World War I to bring Iraq under British colonial
control, with limited sovereignty, using "40 handpicked
representatives," all of whom were expected to support the British
agenda. After Iraqi protests went unheard, the British soon had a
protracted, nationwide insurgency on their hands.
Black recounts numerous incidents of exploitation in
intricate detail; his analysis of how Iraq's oil has greased the treads
of war throughout modern history is particularly noteworthy. He writes
that Iraqi crude fueled the tanks, warships, submarines and airplanes
that helped fight for ultimate control of Iraqi territory during World
War II. Well into the Cold War, Iraq remained a strategic outpost, even
as its people remained "largely destitute, significantly unemployed,
and detached en masse from the nation's oil wealth." Black's book is
thoughtful and meticulous, though many readers may find the breadth of
analysis too ambitious and, at just fewer than 500 pages, a bit tedious
at points. His analysis, nevertheless, highlights the deficit of
legitimacy the United States faces in Iraq and the wider Middle East.
Since so few Arabs will seriously listen to arguments
about democracy from the U.S. government, the war of ideas will have to
be fought by nongovernmental organizations, governments other than the
U.S. administration, and friendly leaders in the Islamic world.
Washington could, however, play a role in stimulating such groups,
governments and individuals to assume these tasks. The Office of
Transition Initiatives at the State Department has staged many
successful public relations campaigns for the United States by
supporting local NGOs in Muslim countries critical to the global fight
against al Qaeda, such as Indonesia and Afghanistan.
Above all, U.S. nation-building efforts and operations
against the global jihadist movement must be planned with an
appreciation for how such efforts affect the global war of ideas. A
sound and effective response in that contest could become our greatest
asset; an inconsistent and ineffective response, as we are now seeing,
will certainly become one of our greatest weaknesses. •
Richard A. Clarke, the White House
counterterrorism coordinator under Presidents Clinton and Bush, is the
author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."
