Dancing In The No-Fly Zone: A Woman's Journey Through Iraq by Hadani Ditmars is a good travelogue of her trip back to the country in September 2003, a reunion of sorts with various characters and places that she visited various times since 1997. She supplies a personal look at the people and country as well as the destruction brought upon them. But, overall, it is a hopeful book in that it also focuses on the strength of the people, even in desperate times.
Ditmars is cynical about the U.S. presence and war effort, but overall the book focuses on the culture and people. This in the end if anything provides a more devastating critique on our presence, and how far Iraq has fallen. Sadly, she notes that things only got worse after she left, writing in 2005. She recently was on C-SPAN Booknotes reading from the book, and came off as quite a character herself. Ditmars is Canadian, but with some Middle Eastern blood in her.
In related reading news, I am current reading The Bush Agenda: Invading The World One Economy at at Time by Antonia Juhasz. The book's thesis is discussed here.* Juhasz (cute cover pic) honors Naomi Klein for her "groundbreaking work" in this area, namely economic neocolonialism, especially respecting international corporations. Throw in the problems with unregulated "free trade" (backed up by thousands of pages of regulations), and you have a taste of this important alternate point of view respecting economic/foreign policy. Klein's documentary on the Argentina situation, The Take, her collection of essays, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, as well coverage of the Iraqi situation in The Nation provide useful additional clarification.
Juhasz is an expert in international trade and finance policy, also serving as an aide to Rep. John Conyers. In an interview, she summarizes her thesis:
The Bush administration has implemented a particularly radical model of corporate globalization by which it has teamed overt military might -- full-scale invasion -- with the advancement of its corporate globalization agenda. And this model is particularly imperial -- that's one of the things that makes it different from, for example, the Reagan or Bush Sr. regimes. As opposed to simply replacing the head of a regime that is no longer serving the interests of the administration, the Bush team has gone further -- using a military invasion to fundamentally transform a country's political and economic structure.
One need not totally agree with voices such as Klein and Juhasz to not realize the troubling aspects of the things for which they speak. It hits to the core of the philosophy behind not just the Iraqi adventure, but neoconservative foreign policy generally. In other words, the depth of the problem. [The book is a bit long, if one you can skim, so various articles on this subject is a good place to get a taste of the themes as well. The ones referenced above, for instance. The Klein book, for instance, is a collection of articles.]
To end on a somewhat amusing note, I linked up my Obama post to a Slate Fray post, since it turns out Amy Sullivan actually wrote something about the speech. A few people actually clicked the link, and the referral of one turned out to be the Halliburton website. I get some interesting links, including some labeled as coming from Congress, but not quite one like that.
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* It is posted on Gadfly, a good progressive blog that I put on my blogroll. One participant is concerned with Greg Palast's attempt to link U.S. electoral fraud with the ongoing Mexican elections. As with Juhasz, the author finds him a good resource, but in this case, he believes Palast does not have a leg to stand on.
Hearing him on the radio, I too find him a bit too gung ho about thinking a case is proven without necessary facts. Thus, it is "clear" that Ohio went to Kerry, when at best there is a reasonable case to be made that it conceivably did. On the issue of the 2006 elections and possible e-voting problems, BTC News has a warning here.