David M's Reviews > The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East

The Age of Jihad by Patrick Cockburn
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it was amazing
Read 2 times. Last read April 21, 2018 to April 25, 2018.

A devastating read filled with unspeakable horror and cutting geopolitical insight. This book will make you cry and/or burn with rage on nearly every page. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

*
This is one of the striking features of the present era: wars turn into bloody stalemates with no outright winners or losers, aside from the millions of civilians who are the victims. Political systems decay or are overthrown but nobody is strong enough to replace them. An Islamic cult motivates people so they are prepared to die for it in a way that is no longer true of nationalism or socialism.


Compare Wolfgang Streeck's great description of capitalism collapsing from its own entropy in the advanced industrial countries (How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System)

Patrick Cockburn is the best guide I know to the apocalyptic wars wracking Middle East for the past decade and a half; indeed he might be the best guide to the apocalypse tout court. If you want to know what the future has in store for humanity, probably best to study Syria.

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From 2009

Two or three years ago, tattoo artists in Baghdad were working overtime giving distinctive tattoos to men who feared they would be killed in the Sunni-Shia sectarian slaughter. Aware that the faces of so many who died were being mutilated, potential victims wanted their families to be able to identify their bodies through a special mark known only to close relatives. One man had an olive tree tattooed on his body because his father had planted one the day he was born.


(think of this whenever unreconstructed Iraq war supporters decry the rising tide of incivility and lack of viewpoint diversity in the media today; maybe if you inflict that kind of suffering on a people, your views shouldn't be tolerated; your opinions are worthless)
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Reading Progress

Finished Reading
April 20, 2018 – Shelved
April 20, 2018 – Shelved as: to-read
April 21, 2018 – Started Reading
April 22, 2018 –
page 146
31.47% "Love to provoke civil war, and then throw up our hands & say the problem with America is we’re just too idealistic; we think we can solve all the world’s problems. Might be nice to just stop causing so many problems for the rest of the world."
April 24, 2018 –
page 248
53.45% "In 2009, Joe Lieberman approvingly cited an American official in Sanaa, "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If you don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war." ... no amount of blood will ever be enough for these bumbling psychopaths."
April 25, 2018 – Finished Reading

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message 1: by sologdin (new)

sologdin getting a bit pessimistic as the trump regime gets long in the tooth, eh?


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