The disaster in Iraq has consisted of many elements, but the persisting and even growing influence of fascistlike ideologies among the Iraqis has proved to be a main one. In the past and even today, the intellectuals of the democratic world have made very little effort to study, interpret and intellectually demolish the doctrines of Baathism and radical Islamism. It is rare to meet anyone, apart from regional experts, who has even bothered to study the main texts of these doctrines—though it is not at all rare to read apologies for the doctrines in question, and altogether common to read outright fantasies about what those doctrines actually say. We should address these ideologies, then. We should engage in a labor of criticism.
