Review Beyond The Storm, A Gulf Crisis Reader

Bennis, Phyllis Moushabeck, Michel Edited by, Beyond The Storm, A Gulf Crisis Reader, Olive Branch Press, 1991

 

Beyond The Storm, A Gulf Crisis Reader is an anthology on the Gulf War. Like any such collection there is a huge range of topics covered and the quality varies. The editors Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck should be given credit for finding a large number of Arab writers to contribute since their voices are usually absent from coverage on the Middle East. The book also covers a huge range of issues not just the war such as human rights, the environment, how various countries dealt with the conflict, etc.

 

The first section of the book is about the Gulf War. Michel Moushabeck provides a short but concise history of Iraq from ancient times to the Gulf War. Hala Fattah does the same for Kuwait. Bishara Bahhah goes through Saddam’s motivations for invading Kuwait and puts most of the blame upon Saddam’s miscalculations such as misreading how the world would react to his actions.

 

The second covers U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Noam Chomsky actually gives a rather coherent overview of U.S. imperialism since World War II and how President Bush decided early on to go to war. It’s not as rambling as some of Chomsky’s other pieces but it still goes off on tangents. Sheila Ryan discusses how the U.S. began focusing upon the Middle East starting with the Nixon administration which began constructing military bases for countries in the region which the U.S. could use and made larger and larger military sales to the area as well. Jeanne Butterfield talks about how the U.S. kept Israel out of the war by providing more aid and financing. Finally Phyllis Bennis writes on how the U.S. strong armed the U.N. to do its bidding.

 

There are a couple other interesting piece. Laura Flanders dealt with how the U.S. media supported the war by repeating administration stories like comparing Saddam to Hitler and dismissed any opposition.

 

Those two parts are by far the best in the book. They are concise and deal directly with the war.

 

The other parts of Beyond The Storm go in all different directions and there are some bad chapters.

 

Eqbal Ahmad wrote the introduction about Western imperialism. It was supposed to give background to the Gulf War but was rambling and said that it was the end of the American Century which proved wrong. Barbara Ehrenreich covered the warrior culture in the U.S. which seemed like a waste of time. There were several chapters on the peace movement in the U.S., England, Europe and Israel. They talked about the mobilizations and organizing but they all obviously failed. That seemed to be because they focused upon getting people into the streets as if having massive marches would have any influence upon politicians committed to war. Clovis Maksoud seemed to believe that the Arab states could assert themselves by making the Arab League more active and taking on the Arab-Israeli Conflict. That didn’t happen.

 

Because there are so many topics covered far more than your usual anthology that allows the reader to go through the index and pick and choose what to read. There are too many ups and downs to take on the whole volume. This is true of any collection.

 

Beyond The Storm has enough engaging pieces to be worthwhile. It’s important because the number of Arab writers. It also covers a far wider range of topics than many others in this genre. it could be a starting point for further research into the Gulf War which set the stage for U.S.-Iraq relations for the next ten plus years.

 

 

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