It is impossible to reply to all the errors in this review of the American Raj: Liberation or Domination? by Eric Margolis, so a few corrections must suffice. First, Mark Proudman’s claim that Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders would amount to the euthanization of the Jewish state is a view held by Israel’s political far right. Some of Israel’s most respected politicians and thinkers have proposed such a withdrawal.
Additionally, there is nothing “anti-American” about Margolis. He has proudly served in the United States Armed Forces and calls himself an Eisenhower Republican. He criticizes decades of misguided U.S. policy in the Middle East that has led to much of its current violence and suffering.
While the reviewer sneers at Quebecor’s Sun Media chain—Canada’s leader in readership—as “demotic” (i.e., low class), it is noteworthy that Margolis writes for this chain because they have never changed a word of his writing or forced him, as do other major papers, to toe the party line. Margolis’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the International Herald Tribune and the Gulf Times, among others. Are these the papers the reviewer refers to as tabloids?
Proudman claims India was better off under British imperialism. His neocolonial view would be greeted with deep contempt by Indians. The same holds for his stance that Arabs should yearn for British colonial rule.
Also, Proudman claims oil was not discovered in Kurdistan until 1916. That is incorrect. Oil was known to exist in Kurdistan since biblical times. The Turkish Petroleum Company was formed in 1912 to exploit the oil.
Margolis’s assertion about meeting British technicians in Baghdad in 1990 working on germ weapons wasn’t an exaggeration, or false, as the reviewer—who was probably never in Iraq during that era—asserts. Margolis discovered the British technicians, who were being held hostage with other foreigners. They showed him documents from Britain’s Ministry of Defence and MI6, as well as identification cards, proving they had been seconded by the British government to Iraq, working at the Salman Pak bio-warfare plant. Margolis, who has taught military strategy and covered 14 wars, is not likely to be misled.
Unfortunately, Proudman misses the objective of American Raj, which addresses the tensions and violence between the West and the Muslim world and provides a roadmap for workable peace.
Stephanie Blok
Director of Media Relations for Eric Margolis
Toronto, Ontario
