Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I got a slightly unfortunately worded invitation from the Guardian and the publishers I.B.Taurus which said that they :
invite you to celebrate the launch of
DEFEAT
The book is by Jonathan Steele and sets out "Why They Lost Iraq". I got there in time to hear him talk about how the Americans turned victory into defeat by staying and becoming an occupying power. He lashed out at the so-called "Arabists" in the Foreign Office who were pathetic in their understanding of what was likely to happen. Now they are trying to insinuate that it was "all the Americans' fault" and they were wiser. Not at all says the author and he called for "a full scale public enquiry" into a huge policy catastrophe. I agree.
I have great admiration for Steele's journalistic courage. He went to the country frequently. But... his book is an argument about and an analysis of the doomed nature of the venture from the start. Yet it seems that it is written as is the way so often on the left as if he is a lone voice in the wilderness. I was particularly struck by the fact that none of the footnotes nor even the bibliography or the list of books and "web resources" has a single reference to Paul Rogers whose weekly column in openDemocracy since 2001, as well as his books based on his columns and his reports for the Oxford Research Group have put the entire newspaper industry in the UK to shame. He tracked the defeat if anyone did, saw the US and UK strategic blindness, set out the evidence. You'd have thought his research would have provided Steele with a perfect pendant for his own coverage. Is it something about newspapers just not accepting that web coverage can be as analytic and authoritative as theirs?
