“Not prettiness, mind you, whose nature is trite, but beauty, which sinks to the depths” — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“History” has very little to say about this war other than to recall the greatest battle ever fought between Arabs and Persians on the plains of Qadisiyyah in southern Iraq (A.D. 636). This event produces intensely emotive imagery in Iraq where the war was officially called Qadisiyyat Saddam. The irony is, however, that the battle of Qadisiyya only succeeded in… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share
“In Iraq, the public has lost all sense of self; it exists only in the form artificially imparted to it by “its” regime. This was an outcome of statification, party growth, and all the other indices that have been discussed.442 The dissolution of Iraqi identity is the most fundamental explanation for why no connection existed in Baʿthist Iraq between military… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share
“Gone was the slightest implication of compassion if it had ever existed before. “I have seen young boys burned alive,” he said. “I have… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“The intimate connection between war and citizenship lies at the heart of the modern state,” Fouad ‘Ajami wrote of the 1967 defeat.” — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“The absence of real pressures from within Iraqi society, from Iran, from the world at large, or even from his own party leaves those… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“Not prettiness, mind you, whose nature is trite, but beauty, which sinks to the depths” — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“Masses of Iraqis keep on dying for no palpably tangible reason that they can so much as identify to themselves, far less anyone else.… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
“Therefore, the legacy of pan-Arabism as a phase in postwar Arab politics lies not in its failure over half a century to achieve Arab… — Kanan Makiya Copy Share Image
