Provincializing America: Race, Neoliberalism, and Sovereignty in the War on Iraq

Abstract

I came of age in the early years of the “War on Terror.” As a young student activist, my initial arguments against the wars in 2001 and 2003 followed a common logic, responding to disinformation, ahistorical narratives, and false claims about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Muslims. Like many who work in the fields of Middle Eastern studies, this work was driven by the belief that exposing the narratives of the target nations to be wrong would in turn expose the false premises behind the wars. I have by now spent my entire adult life researching, writing, and teaching about the “War on Terror” with a specific focus on the war on Iraq. My hope was that “humanizing” and providing more insight into the views of the people “over there” would alter popular ideas in the United States and steer American state actions in a different direction than intervention.