Beautiful Nova Scotia

Here's a picture taken yesterday in Margaretsville on the Bay of Fundy. This lighthouse has been an image much painted by artists in the area.

Too Late

I've finished the book by Paul William Roberts, A War Against Truth. If there is anything that seems clear from Roberts book four years into the Iraq war, it's that some of the truth he speaks of is just now coming to light among the American people themselves as returning soldiers speak of how ill-prepared they were, how they were unsure of what they were fighting for, how or why. Revved up to think they would be greeted as "liberators", and that they would be in and out of Iraq in a matter of weeks, never mind months and now years, then dismayed to find they were met with derision, hate and open defiance, the ordinary soldier has been painfully caught in the middle of a political course of action that has had disastrous consequences.

Roberts points out how there was very little understanding of the people at the beginning. Yes, there were many people who would have hailed the Americans as liberators at the beginning - yes, indeed, Saddam's regime was brutal and can't be defended- but the American soldiers had no training and no understanding of how to work with the potentially sympathetic individuals and groups. He gives examples from his own aquaintance of people who were alienated by having guns poked in their faces and cursed at by baby-faced soldiers. In one of his examples he tells of an Iraqi who helped the Amerticans by sharing information and leading them to a mass grave and to some of the key players in Saddam's regime. Much damage was done because the man was never thanked properly or recognized in any way. If the soldiers involved had understood something of Iraq culture they might have capitalized on making that man and others like him allies, instead of turning them into enemies, and the whole situation into a real liberation and not an occupation.

Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from this for the Canadians in Afghanistan: as Roberts says, perhaps the biggest problem in the world is "trying to shove ideologies down each others throats." I understand that the Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are working with the people and I think that is a good thing.

One Angry Man

I'm into my second major non-fiction book in a month. I've been reading Paul William Roberts A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq. Roberts is a Canadian journalist who writes for magazines like Harpers. I'd already read his early 90's book The Demonic Comedy:Some Detours in the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, so I knew that Roberts, like no other journalist, had a great deal of interest in the Middle East, not to say insider information and contacts. I also knew that Roberts' writing tended to be anecdotal, laced with irony and black humour, but that underneath it all it would be written with heart. I also knew Roberts to be a very "left wing" commentator and not at all reticent to speak out against the war in Iraq (I think that's clear from his use of "invasion" in the subtitle).

Paul William Roberts has a Masters in literature from Oxford, and I would classify his books as creative non-fiction in that he makes use of many literary references - snippets of poetry from Yeats and Auden; poetry and prose bits from ancient and modern Persians; quotes from authors as far ranging as Mark Twain to Noam Chomsky. But the book, as well as being a personal account, is well researched and documented with many footnoted references.

This is one angry man and one angry book! Writing between March 2003 and 2004, with an "epilogue' written in 2005, Roberts goes so far as to say that George Bush should be impeached for going into Iraq; he calls the Bush administration "mass murderers" for their bombing of civilians; says that they should all be tried for war crimes for their breaking of countless Geneva Convention protocols; warns the people of the United States to wake up to the fact that this war is costing them as taxpayers $431 billion per year; and makes the plea to the world's people that nothing can ever be accomplished by war - ever.