scholarly journals Suspect Device: British Subsidised Theatre’s Response to the Iraq War, 2003-2011.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laurence Cotterell
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
Cultural Materialism ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Cultural Empathy ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Domestic Form

This thesis explores the most significant British subsidised theatre that was created in response to the Iraq War. Suspect Device: British Subsidised Theatre’s Response to the Iraq War, 2003-2011 looks to examine how British theatre’s contemporary forms became increasingly politicised and adapted to critique the material circumstances of a contentious Middle Eastern war. This work analyses the theatre of the Iraq war using Cultural Materialism and a range of postructuralist and postmarxist methodologies. Suspect Device investigates the key plays of the period in terms of their presentation of the politics of the initial invasion, as well as the ensuing issues of war trauma and the British soldier’s experience as a part of the coalition. The British domestic response to the publicised issues of new forms of prison, war crimes and the presentation of the victim is extrapolated in terms of contemporary plays. This thesis also explores selected plays for domestic youth created in response to the PREVENT strategy and how theatre became a contentious politicised instrument. The work examines how an apparent shortfall in cultural empathy for the victims of the war was understood and explained in terms of a theatre working within a climate of wide-scale commodification. Suspect Device investigates pivotal plays across a number of British locations and genres with the aim of establishing common trends and styles of form and content. It attempts to determine if the postmodern forms of contemporary theatre responded with a re-emergent sense of the material. There has been much work on theatre around the ‘War on Terror’ but, as yet, little that considers the Iraq War specifically and in terms of its response, commercialisation and domestic form.

scholarly journals Recognizing Friend and Foe: Biometrics, Veridiction, and the Iraq War

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefka Hristova
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Recognition Method ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
A Site ◽  
Identification Practices

In analyzing the deployment of biomertics in Iraq, argue that whereas the body was seen as a site of verification in 20th century surveillance and identification practices, in the ongoing War on Terror, and the Iraq War more specifically, it became a site of veridiction - a site in which the truth about the security of the state can be analyzed (Foucault 2008:32). The body thus became the basis for determining not so much one’s unique identity but one’s friendliness to the normative state order. Enemies could thus be identified and confined as a group, and in this process the state could be secured. In the ongoing of the War on Terror, the visual regime of veridiction has been further articulated to the logic of digital technologies in order to categorize an unfamiliar diverse population into a binary simplistic schema consistent of true and false, therefore friend or foe, and thus “go” - allowed to move through the country or “no go” - destined to be detained. In other words, the digitization of veridiction as the primary goal of biometrics is evident in the automation of the recognition method, the conversion of the archive into database, the transition away from the anthropological station onto mobile dispersed data-gathering enterprise, and replacement of scientific expertise with easy-to-use automated intelligence.

scholarly journals Chemical Weapons in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). 1. Iraq Preparing for Chemical War

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-64
Author(s):  
Supotnitskiy M.V. Kovtun V.A.
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Technical Documentation ◽  
Industrial Base ◽  
Chemical Agents ◽  
Third World Country ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Modern Chemical

The Iraqis became the first nation to use chemical weapons on the modern battlefield during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). There are no general reviews and research available on this issue in Russian. It also puts the Russian researchers in an unequal position in comparison with their Western and Middle Eastern colleagues, who have such information from a wide range of sources. This lack of knowledge limits our ability to understand the secret mechanisms that trigger modern chemical wars in the Middle East. The analysis in the present study is based on different Western sources, UN and CIA materials. The article shows that Iraq – a third world country with the population of 16,3 million people in 1980-ies and relatively low educational level – could start its chemical weapons program only due to the Western aid and assistance (supplies of the precursors, technologies and technical documentation, education of specialists, diplomatic support ect). Only due to this assistance the Iraqi`s chemical weapons program could become successful. The industrial production of chemical agents and chemical munitions of various tactical purposes was established by the Iraqis in less than 10 years. By the end of the 1980-ies, the Iraqi chemists laid the foundations of the future research in the sphere of toxic chemicals. The industrial base for the production of CW have also been established. For Russia, the success of the Iraq`s chemical weapons program is a warning. It means that technically backward, but oil rich quasi-state can acquire chemical weapons in a few years with the clandestine support of the same «sponsors», and use it both for provocations and for conducting combat operations in the regions, vital for Russia`s interests.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunaina Marr Maira
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
South Asian ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
History Of

The Introduction outlines the major questions regarding Muslim American youth and the turn to rights-based activism and cross-ethnic coalitions that are the focus of the book. It discusses why the concept of “youth,” and particularly Muslim and Middle Eastern youth, is so central to to the War on Terror and also often exceptionalized in the post-9/11 moment. It offers an overview of the context of the ethnographic research in Silicon Valley and Fremont/Hayward, situating the three communities (South Asian, Arab, and Afghan American) in the study against the backdrop of the longer history of contestations over race, class, and immigration in this region. It also provides a discussion of the research methods on which the project is based.

scholarly journals Bush's “Useful Idiots”: 9/11, the Liberal Hawks and the Cooption of the “War on Terror”

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA RYAN
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
World View ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Total Failure ◽  
A Priority

This article examines the development of two distinct theories of American internationalism in the 1990s – the political humanitarianism of the liberal hawks and the unipolarism of the neoconservatives – and the fundamentally different and opposing grounds on which these two groups supported the 2003 Iraq War. The liberal hawks, however, failed almost completely to examine the motivations of the neoconservative architects of the “war on terror.” Instead, they imposed their own normative schema on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and campaigned for them as wars of liberation. Their almost total failure to engage with the intellectual origins of the war led them to accept uncritically the idealistic rhetoric of the President and to assume that the Bush administration and the neoconservatives were motivated by the same idealism and world view as they were themselves. This led them to dismiss critics of the war as opponents of liberal values. As the situation in Iraq worsened, they continued to view the war as a moral endeavour – just one that had gone wrong, as opposed to a war fought for strategic reasons in which nation building was never a priority.

The barbarians of Fallujah

Race & Class ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Matt Carr
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
The City

The `global war on terror' is often represented as a struggle between incompatible opposites, of good versus evil, terror versus democracy and civilisation versus barbarism. The deployment of such dichotomies was part of the background to the onslaught on Fallujah in 2004, serving to provide the US military with the appearance of moral legitimacy, as it turned the city to rubble in order to `save' it. In the US media, the arrogant assumption that the US is civilisationally superior both to the `barbarians' its armies were fighting in the city and to the broader mass of the Iraqi population, was a recurring theme among neo-conservative and pro-war liberal ideologues. Yet, with the city's destruction presented as a moral imperative on behalf of civilised values, there has been scant examination of the allegations that US forces were guilty of war crimes. Moreover, the attack on Fallujah shows that civilisation and barbarism are not diametrically opposed concepts in a `global war on terror' which continues to cause more death and destruction than the violence it is supposedly intended to eliminate.

scholarly journals Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-92
Author(s):  
Louise Gormley ◽  
David Armani
Keyword(s):  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
White House ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Sacrifice ◽  
Page Book

With the noble aims of conflict resolution and peace building, Lawrence G.Potter and Gary G. Sick have compiled an excellent collection of essays on“the war without winners” (p. 2). This remarkable publication, Iran, Iraq,and the Legacies of War, adds to Potter and Sick’s series of co-edited bookson Middle Eastern issues, namely, The Persian Gulf at the Millennium:Essays in Politics, Economy, Security, and Religion (Palgrave Macmillan:1997) and Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Searchfor Consensus (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002). Potter and Sick are two prominentscholars of international affairs at Columbia University. During theCarter presidency, Sick served as the principal White House aide for Iran onthe National Security Council. (Sick is well-known for his exposé All FallDown: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran [Random House: 1985]).This 224-page book was written in the cautiously hopeful belief thatthe time has come for reconciliation to begin. It contains nine chapters plusPotter and Sick’s helpful introduction, which contextualizes the futile warthat shook the world. The Iran-Iraq war was one of the longest and costliestconventional wars of the twentieth century. Although the number ofcasualties is still in dispute, an estimated 400,000 were killed and perhaps700,000 were wounded on both sides (p. 2). The Economist commentedthat “this was a war that should never have been fought … neither sidegained a thing, except the saving of its own regime. And neither regime wasworth the sacrifice” (p. 2) ...

10. Middle East Security: The Politics of Violence after the 2003 Iraq War

2019 ◽  
pp. 226-246
Author(s):  
Marina Calculli
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Two Sides

This chapter explores contemporary security in the Middle East by highlighting the nexus between the uses and justification of violence. Focusing on the post 9/11 reordering of the Middle East, it shows how state and non-state actors use the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ to depoliticize military interventions against political rivals. More specifically, it argues that such actors mobilize the politics of shame to contain and undermine their rivals. Such efforts are met with attempts to counter-shame and re-politicize the use of violence, producing a cycle of action and counter-action that seeks to legitimize and delegitimize competing visions of security and order in the Middle East. In this context, security and insecurity are two sides of the same coin that fluctuate according to the prevailing balance of power.

scholarly journals Ideology, Realpolitik, and US Foreign Policy

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 578-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeed Dawisha
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Counterfactual Theory ◽  
Distinguished Group

Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence. By Frank P. Harvey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 360p. $103.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.The Iraq War initiated by the Bush administration in 2003 was and perhaps continues to be an important episode in world politics, US politics, and the politics of the Middle East. The war also galvanized controversy among public intellectuals and broader publics, and generated strong opposition in many European and Middle Eastern countries. In Explaining the Iraq War, Frank P. Harvey offers an interesting analysis of the war and its causes, and does so in a way that raises broader questions about politics and about the scientific study of politics. We have thus invited a distinguished group of political scientists from a variety of subfields to review the book, both as an account of the Iraq War and as a contribution to political science more generally.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document