Quotes from Kanan Makiya

He also knew that there is no escape from power like his, no exit, no way out of the predicament that being always on creates; there is only death.

Not prettiness, mind you, whose nature is trite, but beauty, which sinks to the depths

Or perhaps it is a matter of those despised parts of our natures that are normally frittered away as harmless foibles giving rise in times of war to monsters.

Therefore, the legacy of pan-Arabism as a phase in postwar Arab politics lies not in its failure over half a century to achieve Arab unity but in the way it captured the high ground of all politics: the language and fundamental categories it is conducted in.

In politics, a conflict only exists in public; otherwise it is merely a potential for conflict, which we can never be certain exists or will materialize.

The absence of real pressures from within Iraqi society, from Iran, from the world at large, or even from his own party leaves those of us who would write about the "cause" of this war with nothing to evaluate "objectively" and argue about.

Masses of Iraqis keep on dying for no palpably tangible reason that they can so much as identify to themselves, far less anyone else. Why?

In Iraq, the public has lost all sense of self; it exists only in the form artificially imparted to it by "its" regime. This was an outcome of statification, party growth, and all the other indices that have been discussed.442 The dissolution of Iraqi identity is the most fundamental explanation for why no connection existed in Ba?thist Iraq between military achievements and extending or withholding political allegiance.

Gone was the slightest implication of compassion if it had ever existed before. "I have seen young boys burned alive," he said. "I have seen Iranian and Iraqi boys tearing each other literally with their nails and teeth. It is raging hate against raging hate.