The invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States and Britain - with retrospective sanction of this recolonisation by the United Nations - marks a turning point in world history and a renewal of the two-hundred-year war waged by the North against the South. Whatever the final outcome of this, the assault and capture of Iraq by the American Empire and its English adjutant will shape the politics of the twenty-first century. In this provocative book, Tariq Ali argues against the view that sees imperialist occupation as the only viable solution to bring about regime-change in corrupt and dictatorial states. The American Empire, like all its predecessors, acts primarily out of self interest. It is the political, economic and strategic needs of the United States that determine its foreign policy. "Bush in Babylon" is above all a history of Iraq resistance against empires old and new.
Imperial interventions in the past created a layer of collaborators who could only be removed via a revolution; but the tragedy of Iraq is also self-inflicted, as the radical colonels, courageous communists and burnt-out Ba'athists failed to establish a stable and just democratic republic, thus enabling a return visit by imperialism. Like the author's previous work, "Clash of Fundamentalisms", this work presents a cultural history and a heart-felt homage to the great poets of Iraq and the Arab world whose influence remained strong throughout their long periods of exile, and who are united in poetic resistance to the latest catastrophe.