The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein

The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein
by Sandra MacKey
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About the Author

Sandra Mackey is a veteran journalist who has written many books on the Middle East. She lives in Atlanta.
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Book Description

Saddam Hussein is high on America's enemies list?-but does an Iraq without him hold the seeds of the next Yugoslavia? To the dismay of many in the West, the Gulf War ended with Saddam Hussein still in control, still defiant, and determined to use any means of striking back. This book sounds an urgent note of caution: a future Iraq without Hussein could be even more unstable and more problematical to the security of the United States.

The Reckoning is an account of the forces?-historical, religious, ethnic, and political?-that produced Saddam's dictatorship. Iraq was forged after World War I from the Mesopotamian region of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, and its people have never had a national identity or a sense of common purpose. Hussein, ruling by terror, pitted the various ethnic groups, religious interests, and tribes against one another, and in so doing achieved the destruction of Iraq's middle class and civilized society. After he goes, the country could be the site of conflict even more vicious than the Balkan wars. With a new epilogue for this paperback edition. 16 b/w photographs, 6 maps.
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly:

A journalist who has long covered the Middle East, Mackey destroys the myth that toppling Saddam Hussein will solve Iraq's problems and America's. She clearly traces the complex and diverse history of the country from its biblical roots to the present day. The most salient feature of the country, she argues strongly, is its fragility: Iraq is a patchwork of peoples (both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, as well as Kurds) that hangs together by a thread. Without addressing how these peoples can form a national identity, the author claims, a post-Saddam Iraq could be worse than the Balkans. But even though much of the book centers on Iraq's long history, it is the author's account of the past 40 years that is the most instructive. While much of the information about Saddam has been presented elsewhere, Mackey summarizes his career well: his seizure of power, with its emphasis on the country's Arab roots, came after a long time of local chaos, and his rule of terror has kept him in charge but led to wars that impoverished his people. "Like Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War, Iraq itself is a body whose skin is intact but whose bones are broken." Mackey's last chapter is her most chilling. If there is no focus on what will come after Saddam, she says,then Iraq's future the disintegration of the country into separate warring cantons will be a nightmare, both for its people and for the United States. With the Bush administration focusing on Iraq as the next step in its war against terrorism, this book sounds an important cautionary note.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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From Library Journal

Iraq has been a country of great interest to the United States since the 1991 Gulf War. Although that conflict ended over a decade ago with the military defeat of Saddam Hussein's forces and their expulsion from Kuwait, low-level U.S. bombing of Iraqi targets has continued to the present time. The events of September 11 have elevated Iraq to a higher level of concern to U.S. decision-makers. In recent months, calls for a massive attack against Iraq are being heard from different governmental and journalistic corners in the United States. Yet, Iraq and its history remain a mystery to most Americans. This highly readable, jargon-free, and evenhanded book goes a long way in providing a comprehensive account of Iraq's recent political history to Western readers. Mackey, a veteran journalist who has traveled to Iraq and has written extensively on the Middle East, has done an admirable job of explaining the myriad social, political, and cultural forces that have shaped the contours of the contemporary Iraqi state and its authoritarian political system. Recommended for all public libraries. Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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From Booklist

Veteran journalist Mackey (The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom [1987]; The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation [1996])offers a comprehensive history of Iraq and its early Mesopotamian civilization with penetrating biographies of all of its historical figures through the ages, shedding perspective on the current regime of Saddam Hussein and looking ahead to what an Iraq without Hussein might resemble. Modern Iraq is a concoction of multiple divergent communities (Sunni, Shii, and Christian) who view themselves as having a national identity apart from Arab nationalism. King Faisal, modern Iraq's architect, built a strong national army as a tool for cementing all of the elements within. It took a tough Saddam Hussein to later bring the power of the state to fruition. But Mackey warns that those who simplistically see the removal of Saddam as a cure-all are fooling themselves. Chaos in the Persian Gulf could ensue, the author argues, which would threaten American security, as well as thrust the U.S. into the hellish task of "nation-building." An extremely thorough appraisal. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.