Middle East Archives - Martin's Booklog

A Savage War of Peace — Alistair Horne

Published on January 25, 2009

Cover of A Savage War of Peace

A Savage War of Peace
Alistair Horne
604 pages including index
published in 1977

Remember how the White House a few years ago, in one of their periodic attempts at convincing the rest of the world George Bush is not a complete moron, released a list of books supposedly read by him in the past year? One of the books on the list was this, A Savage War of Peace, Alistair Horne’s history of the Algerian struggle for independence from France. What’s more, the same book was also reported to be widely read in the US army occupying Iraq and Afghanistan as part of an attempt to understand the enterprise they were engaging in. This isn’t necessarily a recommendation of course; another much read book in the US army is that piece of pseudoscientific racism, The Arab Mind. A sort of mixed bag of recommendations then: this is clearly an important book in that it seems to have shaped the American strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, but does this make this a good book?

Fortunately, it does. Had Bush read this book in 2002 before the War on Iraq, and had he been able to actually understand what he read, he may have actually decided against the invasion. Everything that happened in Iraq is described here, every mistake and failed strategy the Americans would use, written down twentyfive years before the war even started. No wonder various army generals studied it so vidly. Colonial wars follow certain patterns it seems and what happened in Algeria in 1954-62 can be used as a guide to Iraq forty years later.

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side — Clive Stafford Smith

Published on August 17, 2008

Cover of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side
Clive Stafford Smith
307 pages including index
published in 2007

Lord knowns there have been a lot of depressing books published about America’s war on terror; not to mention a metric shitload of blogs writing about it, including my own. So what good is yet another book decrying the injustices committed at Guantanamo Bay? After all, if you don’t know about them by now, you’ll never know. But when the author is one of the lawyer volunteers defending the victims of the war on terror, who has been coming to Guantanamo for years and who also manages to inject some humour in what’s otherwise a bloody dreary subject.

Clive Stafford Smith is somebody who has a lot of experience with worthwhile but hopeless causes, as he spent years working on death penalty cases in the American Deep South. When the news about the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp became known he didn’t hesitate, but immediately got involved. Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is based on his personal experiences at Guantanamo. The title is a reference to the fact that all the lawyers have to stay on the leeward side of the bay and therefore have to take the morning ferry to get to their clients each day. Surprisingly for a book on such a dark subject matter, Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is quite funny in places, due to the absurdity of some of the situations Clive Stafford Smith and his clients find themselves in.

Orientalism – Edward Said

Published on February 10, 2008

Cover of Orientalism

Orientalism
Edward Said
396 pages including index
published in 1978

There are some books that I’m sort of ashamed to review, not because the books themselves are so bad but just because I should’ve read them years ago. Orientalism is one such book. Both it and its author are so often namechecked by leftwing bloggers that I felt a slight twinge of embarassement for only reading it now. Also, I don’t know how it is with you, but I’m often wary to read such widely acclaimed books anyway, as there’s something so “Rik the people’s poet” about reading Said, or Chomsky for that matter. It can look poseurish and nobody wants to come over as that.

Nevertheless, Orientalism is a genuinely important book, even now, thirty years after its first publication. It’s main argument — that Asia in general and the Middle East in particular have long been misrepresented in the west as “the Orient”, an exotic world filled with prejudices and cliches in order to serve imperialist goals in the region — may look a bit obvious now, not as radical as it was at first publication, but this is in great part because Orientalism laid out this argument so convincingly first. In fact it had such an impact, that even thirty years onwards there are still people trying to cut it down to size, as a quick Google search shows. It touched a nerve, perhaps not in the least because Said was an outsider to the academic orientalist tradition he was criticising.