I have been reading The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali. Ali writes well, and this short book provides an overview of the sweep of Islamic history. Ali, born in Lahore in what is now Pakistan and a British citizen, provides a different perspective.
The book brought to my attention something I think has been too often overlooked in the focus on the recent invasion of Iraq and the subsequent insurgency. The prior war and sanctions against Iraq were ruinous. The Ali tells us that the GDP per capita of Iraq fell from $3000 to $500 during that period. No one knows how many people died as a result of Desert Storm and the sanctions who would not otherwise have died, but the number has been estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Subsequent events have amply demonstrated that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction in 2002 when we invaded.
No wonder that so many of those who could leave Iraq have done so since 1990. How long, if ever, before Iraq regains the ground it has lost?
Friday, May 04, 2007
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