Cultural Cleansing in Iraq

DID the Americans and the British intentionally destroy the State of Iraq, or was that the unintended consequence of the invasion?

It was wasn't only that museums and libraries were destroyed, or even that some four or five million Iraqi people have been made into refugees, but what has not been reported, that death squads have killed or driven out the entire intelligentsia of the old regime.

The academics, doctors, dentists, lawyers or anyone with any involvement with the creation of the old Iraq under Saddam Hussein have been killed or have fled.

The question that this book asked is whether this was undertaken consciously and intentionally by the American and British invaders?

As the book shows it is difficult to come up with clear conclusion, but that it asks the questions, and tries to pull the evidence together, is an important act in itself.

Western academia has no tools to handle State destruction. In the 1960's till today we have Development Studies and State Building as a distinct area of study.

What we don't have is a branch of state destruction and re-development. We hope that Cultural Cleansing in Iraq will begin to put this right. Allow me to indulge my position as the writer of this short piece.

War by the big powers is always undertaken for noble rationales, freedom from oppression, democracy instead of tyranny and such words justify our acts of barbarity.

We all need to keep clear minds, behind the high minded rhetoric; war is always undertaken by the wealthy against poorer, weaker peoples for base reasons, money, and power.

The issue is only what wealth and what power.

The Iraqi invasions were to open up the oil fields to Western and mainly American firms, everyone now knows this; and for power, to create huge American bases, so that air and land, military power, can be mobilised against across the entire Arab world, and even beyond at very short notice.

This book shows the evidence that modern empire is the tyranny for which millions of Iraqis have been sacrificed.

Dr Roger van Zwanenberg is the President & Commissioning Editor of Pluto Books Ltd in London. Visit: www.plutobooks.com.